LTAP Merch Brief — Scaled Alps

01 — Context

The Record & Its World

Let the Alpine Play is the debut full-length by Scaled Alps (S.A.), a 16-track record whose operative language is psychic warfare, transmission, esoteric aggression, and the body as receiver. The record's liner notes describe it as a "poison pill" — weird pop disguised as medicine — and its closing text, reproduced in full on the back of every garment, is a manifesto-curse that ends with the Latin Mundus Vult Decipi: the world wants to be deceived.

The aesthetic lineage this project inhabits is the tradition of the crank document — Time Cube, Unabomber, UFO zines, apocalyptic pamphlets, mail art, alchemical marginalia — combined with the confident institutional authority of a transit logo or aerospace insignia. The tension between those two poles is the entire project. It should look like something official. It should read like something unhinged. Neither quality should wink at the other.

"This is psychic warfare. As is all recorded air."

The audience is not a general music consumer. They are people who will recognize the register immediately and want to be inside it. The merch is not promotional material for the band. It is an artifact of the record's world, designed to be worn by people who have been transmitted to.

02 — Assets

Source Material

The Logo

The LTM logo (provided as high-resolution JPG; vector recreation required) is the front of every garment. It is a corporate-grade mark: bold blue letterforms, diagonal speed lines, a stylized mountain chevron, a right-pointing triangle. It reads as a transit authority or fleet vehicle insignia. It is not to be modified, augmented, or contextualized. It stands alone. Its institutional confidence is the first message; the back of the garment is the second.

↑ Schematic reference only. Recreate from supplied JPG as clean vector SVG.

The Back Text

The following is the exact text to appear on the back of all garments. Hierarchy, alignment, and relative weight are prescribed. Typographic interpretation within those constraints is your domain.

BACK TEXT — EXACT CONTENT, EXACT HIERARCHY AS FOR ANYONE WONDERING ABOUT THE END OF MUSIC.
YOU ARE TO CRAWL UP THE ASS OF BALAAM'S EXCUSES.
WE CURSE YOU IN NAME AND WE CURSE YOU IN NUMBER. IF YOU RADIATE YOUR PRESENCE YOU WILL SATIATE OUR HUNGER. ALL YOU SPEAK IS CONSENSUS. AND EVEN THEN SCARCELY. THUS BE SCARCE. TO THE HOPELESS OCCUPANTS AND INSTALLEES.
TO THE HOBBYISTS AND PROPHETS.
TO WEEKEND KNEES.
HEAR TO OUR PROFITS.
Mundus Vult Decipi S.A.

Typographic Notes on the Back Text

The existing layout (flush left opening, centered middle, flush right "THUS BE SCARCE.", flush left address block, centered italic Latin, flush right red signature) is the correct structure — it emerged organically and should be preserved. The typeface used in the source layout appears to be a condensed grotesque for the caps and an italic serif for the Latin and signature. Match or deliberately depart; either is valid. The red is specific: see color guidance below.

03 — Color

Palette & Garment Color

Print Colors

Logo Blue #1B4F9B

Curse Red #B81C1C

White

Near-Black #1A1A18

The logo blue and curse red are non-negotiable. Match as closely as screen-to-print allows; supply Pantone equivalents in final files. Pantone 286 C is a reasonable start for the blue; Pantone 485 C for the red. Confirm with Fourthwall's print spec before finalizing.

Garment Colors

The garment color determines the register. Two modes are prescribed — one per cut group:

Mode	Color	Applicable Cuts	Logic
WHITE	True White	Short-sleeve tee, Tank top	Logo in blue reads exactly as a fleet vehicle or uniform. Back text reads as a photocopied document. Maximum institutional dissonance.
BLACK	True Black	Crewneck sweatshirt, Hooded sweatshirt	Back text in white on black with red headline reads as occult document. Sigils glow. Logo inverts to white. The heavier garments earn the heavier register.

Avoid off-white, heather, washed tones, or any color that reads as "tasteful." The choice is binary and deliberate. True white, true black.

Logo Inversion Note

On black garments, the logo prints white (overall shape) with blue retained in appropriate elements — or fully inverted to white. Test both; present options. The tonal-blue-on-cobalt approach (logo near-disappearing into garment) is also worth a mock on the sweatshirt if curiosity strikes.

04 — Garments

Cuts & Placement

Cut	Blank (suggested)	Front	Back	Garment Color
S/S Tee	Bella+Canvas 3001	Logo, chest-left	Full text + sigils	White
Tank	Bella+Canvas 3480	Logo, chest-left	Full text + sigils	White
L/S Tee	Bella+Canvas 3501	Logo, chest-left	Full text + sigils	White or Black
Crewneck	Champion S149	Logo, full chest	Full text + sigils	Black
Hoodie	Champion S700	Logo, full chest	Full text + sigils	Black

Front logo: chest-left on tailored cuts (tee, tank, L/S), full chest centered on heavier cuts (crewneck, hoodie).
Back text: centered on garment, scaled so the widest line reaches approximately 85% of chest width on a medium.
Sigils are distributed in the margins of the back text — not illustrating specific lines, but orbiting the text block as marginalia. See Section 05.
Champion reverse weave is the correct cultural register for the heavyweight cuts: durable, slightly institutional, not fashion-forward.
Confirm all blanks against Fourthwall's current catalog before finalizing. Substitutions at equivalent quality tier are acceptable.

05 — Sigils

The Symbol System

The back of each garment carries a system of small symbols distributed as marginalia around the text block — not illustrating specific lines, but present as a parallel register of meaning. They function as the notations someone made in their personal copy of a document. They are not decorative. They should not be cute.

Governing Constraint:
Every symbol must be executable in five to eight strokes maximum. All symbols must share a single stroke weight and rendering style — they came from the same hand using the same tool. The aesthetic precedent is the intersection of alchemical marginalia, hobo signs, and mail art glyphs. No symbol should read as illustration. Each should function first as a mark, second as a recognizable object. If it requires ten strokes to be legible, abstract it further until it doesn't.

Total conviction. No irony. No winking.

Pink Diamond

Faceted gem, face-on. Square rotated 45°, two or three internal diagonal lines suggesting facets. Four to six strokes total.

"Pink Diamonds Sparkling in the Bright White Night"

Green Door

Vertical rectangle, circle for knob at mid-height. Or: rectangle bisected by a horizontal at the knob point — reads as both door and cross. The ambiguity is correct.

"Reddening Eyes / Beyond the Green Door"

Blue Sky in a Window

Square divided into four panes. One quadrant filled or hatched. The tension between enclosure and openness is the content.

"A Blue Sky to Soar" / "A Longing Gaze and a Short View"

Scroll

Two vertical cylinders (rollers), rectangle of parchment unrolling between. Three or four horizontal lines on the face — illegible micro-text, too small to read. The digital/ancient pun is the content.

"Scrolling a Dead Sea"

Clock

Standard clock face. Hands pointing in an impossible direction — both up, or reversed. Or: numerals running counterclockwise. The face is familiar; the wrongness is the detail.

"Another Clock Song / Clocks Run Backward"

Drill

Brace-and-bit hand drill, not power drill. Older, more body-proximate, more sinister. The mechanical threat is more interesting than the industrial one.

"Dive Bars Getting Head Bored"

Golden Mushrooms

Two or three Psilocybe cubensis — broad cap, slender stem — as a cluster, slightly varying heights. Gold-filled or outlined per print method.

"Golden Teachers"

Silver Apples

Classic apple silhouette with crescent moon replacing the leaf at the stem. Yeats + the band Silver Apples + "Silver Orchards" — three referents, one mark. Silver/gold pairing with the mushrooms is intentional; place them in proximity.

"Silver Orchards" / Yeats / Silver Apples

Palm Tree

Standard palm silhouette, or: trunk rendered as a palmistry diagram — lifeline, heartline, headline as the grain of the wood. Use the simpler version if the double reading overcomplicates. Trust your eye.

"Palm Trees to the End of the Lifeline"

Throne

Heraldic throne, frontal, high-backed, symmetrical. Single diagonal hatch on the seat for velvet. Authority. Emptiness.

"The Velvet Throne / Luxury's Lap"

Rotary Telephone

Telephone in profile, receiver on cradle (hung up). The circular dial with finger holes is essential — it already looks like a sigil. Hung up is more interesting than in use.

"You Got H-O-R-S, You Want E Too?" / "Dial In a Favor"

Compass South

Four-point compass rose. The S arm is elongated, heavier stroke, arrow-tipped, dominant. The N arm absent or diminished. Reads as compass first; the directional emphasis rewards the attentive.

"Southerly, Southerly"

Candy Heart

Sweethearts conversation heart — slightly irregular oval. The message reads BE MINE (exact lyric) or is left blank. The blank heart is the better choice.

"Have a Little Heart / Be Mine Dear"

Lemon

Lemon in cross-section: the cut face, the segments radiating from center. Citrus geometry is naturally strange. Or: whole lemon with a spiral of zest peeling away.

"Lemon Zest" / "Garnished Wages"

Cuban-Heeled Boot

Boot in profile: stacked Cuban heel, pointed toe. The toe should be slightly ambiguous — pointed enough to suggest the cloven hoof without stating it. This is the most complex symbol and should be the most carefully abstracted.

"Cuban Heels / Cloven"

Witch / Wind

Not the hat. A figure in profile with hair blown strongly horizontal — the wind literalized in the posture. Or more abstractly: a Y shape (dowsing fork / divining rod). The Y reads as glyph before it reads as object.

"The Witch Knows Which Way the Wind Blows"

Gin Coupe

A coupe glass — not highball, not martini. The coupe is the correct register: elegant, archaic, Prohibition-era. One olive or citrus twist on the rim. Simple outline.

"Let the Gin Sing the Last Word"

Tentacles

Two or three tentacles with sucker-dots, curling loosely. The full cephalopod becomes illustration; the tentacles remain glyph. Suggest the creature without showing it.

"Tentacoli"

Volcano

Cone silhouette, eruption plume above. The plume suggested by three or four expanding arcs — not rendered as a cloud. Minimal and catastrophic.

"Pompeii Blows"

Stop Sign

The octagon with STOP, exactly as it appears in the world. Its total literalness makes it strange in this company. Do not abstract it. Use it as found.

"STOP" — hard stop on the vocals / "Throwaway Lines"

Hand Mirror / Eye

Hand mirror in profile with a single eye reflected in the oval face. Or: the oval alone with one eye. "I can see everything."

"Echoing Thoughts in a Mirrored Room / I Can See Everything"

Satellite

Sputnik-type: a sphere with four antennae radiating outward. Reads as scientific instrument, cross, star, and transmission device simultaneously.

"Prison Planetarium" / "Death on Mars / Venusian Elegance"

Wings

Heraldic wings, symmetrical, feathered, in profile. Not the full pegasus — just the wings. Ascension, escape, divine messenger. The horse is implied.

"Flying Off on a Pegasus Away from This Beshitted Earth"

Sealed Envelope

Envelope with a wax seal dot at center. Physical correspondence as anachronism and intimacy. The kiss-seal is the content.

"In Your Letterbox / Crisp and Kiss-Sealed"

Seventh Veil

Seven horizontal lines of diminishing length, or a vertical staff bisected by seven shorter horizontals. Ancient, unreadable, immediately felt. Functions as pure glyph.

"The Seventh Unveiling"

Starburst

Four to six rays from a central point. The simplest possible notation for light, brilliance, or transmission. Peripheral; used as spacing element between symbol clusters.

"Pink Diamonds Sparkling" / "The Light of Heaven Shines"

Placement Logic

Not all symbols appear on every garment. The back text is the primary element; symbols are subordinate and should never crowd or compete with the text.
Suggested density: two to three symbols above the text block, two to three below, one to two embedded between stanzas in the margin. Total per garment: six to eight.
The silver apples and golden mushrooms should appear in proximity to each other on every garment where both are used.
The stop sign, because of its literalness, should appear once per garment at most, positioned near the base of the text block.
Symbol scale: approximately 12–18pt equivalent. They should require a second look to fully read.
Distribution is your call. Trust your eye. Marginalia is not symmetrical.

06 — Mockups

Lifestyle Imagery Strategy

Layflats are dead. The mockup approach for Fourthwall should produce images that read as documentary photography — candid, slightly motion-blurred, natural light, face averted or obscured by shadow or angle. The garment is the subject. The body is the carrier medium. Not a lookbook. Not a band merch booth.

The Conceptual Frame

Mundus Vult Decipi — the world wants to be deceived — makes the mockups being "not real" thematically coherent, not a budget workaround. If anyone notices, that's the answer.

Workflow

Finalize print-ready art files first (front logo as clean vector SVG; back text + sigils as composed, print-ready file). These are the reference assets for mockup generation.
Midjourney v6+ with image prompting, or Krea.ai's real-time canvas. Prompt toward documentary, gritty, available light. The phrase "candid street photograph, back of subject visible, motion" will get you further than anything involving the word "model."
Avoid fashion-campaign posing. Avoid studio setups. Avoid anything that looks like someone chose to be photographed.
Hero image per product page: consider a real sample garment photographed on a real person, face out of frame. One anchoring real image, supporting imagery generated. The real garment confirms the object exists.
The no-face approach fits the record's themes: anonymity, cursing without a named target, presence without identity.

07 — Deliverables

File Specifications

File	Format	Notes
Logo (front)	SVG + PNG 300dpi	Clean vector recreation from supplied JPG. White version for black garments. Supply both.
Back text + sigils	SVG + PNG 300dpi	One version per color mode (white on black, black on white). Sigils embedded in composition.
Full print files	PDF/X-1a or PNG 300dpi	Per Fourthwall template, per cut. CMYK. Bleed and safe zone per platform spec.
Pantone callouts	In PDF / notes doc	Logo blue and curse red. Nearest Pantone solid coated for each.
Mockup exports	JPG, 2000px minimum	Per garment, per colorway. Hero image + two to three lifestyle variants.
Symbol library	SVG	All sigils as individual named SVG files for reuse and future applications.

08 — Latitude

What Is Fixed. What Is Yours.

Fixed — do not alter:
Logo mark (shape, color, proportions) · Back text content (every word, exactly) · Back text hierarchy (the structure of alignment and weight) · Curse red (#B81C1C or nearest Pantone) · Logo blue (#1B4F9B or nearest Pantone) · Garment colors (true white / true black, no deviation) · Symbol stroke-weight consistency (all sigils from same hand)

Yours — extend full creative trust:
Typeface selection for back text (match, depart deliberately, or find something better — the hierarchy is the constraint, not the font) · Exact symbol rendering within the five-to-eight-stroke constraint · Symbol placement and distribution on the back · Which symbols appear on which cuts · Logo inversion approach on black garments · Any additional marginal details or texture that serves the document-artifact quality · Mockup aesthetic and direction within the documentary/candid frame

The brief is the skeleton. The record is the context. Trust what you hear in it.