My Chemical Romance has been putting out a series of mysterious videos to promote their summer tour, during which the band is playing their 2006 album The Black Parade in full. The videos seem to depict a vaguely European country under a dictatorship, accompanied by odd symbols. Now we know what those symbols are.
Artist Nate Piekos, who runs the site Blambot.com, has shared how he and MCR frontman Gerard Way came up with a language for the country depicted in the video teaser.
“Gerard filled me in on his concept of the tour, which would lean heavily on a fictional dictatorship rooted in an equally-fictional Eastern Bloc country,” Piekos shares. “He wanted to create a language that was both made-up, and yet felt entirely real.”
The language, Piekos explains, would be called Keposhka.
“We started delving into 1930s and [’40s] posters from Russia, England, Italy, and other countries, compiling a morgue file of reference images,” Piekos says. “We would send pictures to each other and try to figure out what appealed to us. After poster art, we moved on to brutalist architecture and then period typefaces.”
In all, Piekos delivered 14 fonts for Keposkha.
“I’m really looking forward to your reactions to the immersive experience that Gerard and the band has planned for you,” Piekos says. “Maybe I’ll see you at a show!”
You can read more at Blambot.com. Additionally, two of Piekos’ original hand-drawn Keposkha concept sketches are up for auction on eBay.
MCR’s tour continues Saturday in Los Angeles.
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