Christopher Leckie, our digital creative director, worked closely with Stanley Donwood to bring his artwork to life.

“The campaign started with the ‘Default’ video which slowly revealed the artwork,” he said. “Stanley and Thom [Yorke] were specific about how they wanted to reveal elements of the art and everything grew organically from there. Dan’s incredible and expansive artwork was the perfect base for the website. Dan was keen to focus on animating specific elements from the art rather than the whole thing. It added to the feeling of the site and doing the animation in a deliberately kitsch gif format was fun and seemed to capture the spirit of the moment online.” He added, “Once we had the look and feel of the site together, we knew we could hide and tease content around the site over a period of time because they have such an inquisitive and tech-savvy fanbase.

Using Thom and the band’s social networks to hint what we had done helped people get excited about Atoms For Peace as a new band.” We used social clues and subtle new pieces of animation within the site to reveal exclusive unseen content, including the online launch of the band’s ‘Before Your Very Eyes’ video following its premiere on the big screens at Hollywood Bowl.

The theme of collaboration continued when Donwood worked with INSA on a piece called Hollywood Dooom GIF. INSA took Donwood’s work and used it to turn XL’s LA office into a piece of a gif-itti, a new artwork that only exists online (and fleetingly in the real world), and that involved INSA painting and reprinting new frames of animation across the building.

We also worked with the digital artist Glitchr who created bespoke social message art for the campaign.

We wanted to build an album stream that reflected themes from the album and have it delivered in a very personal way from the band to fans, and then from fan to fan.

For maximum impact and a very direct-to-fans launch, Thom and Nigel [Godrich] took to Reddit for an AMA [ask me anything], which ended with them pointing fans to the stream. We then set about bringing the aesthetic to life in the real world in a way that fans could directly engage with.

To celebrate the band’s three-night residency at the Roundhouse in London, we created The Atoms For Peace Drawing Room. XL’s creative director, Phil Lee and events manager, Emily Kendrick worked with Stanley and the band to create a working art space opposite the venue, transforming the upstairs of The Enterprise in Camden into a space designed by Stanley for what he referred to as a ‘warm action’ – a haven of wall-to-wall monochrome. Welcoming over 4,000 fans in its run of four days, the Drawing Room featured unique merchandise much of which was created on site. Over 6,000 vinyl were screen printed by hand, along with bespoke T-shirts and posters created at the on-stage pop-up print shop. Inside fans could take a seat on the one-off pieces of Amok furniture, view and order from the latest collection of Donwood’s works or just stay for a chat with the staff and other fans.