Secret 7 returned again in 2025, this year to raise money for War Child. As ever, the Secret 7" team curated seven songs from seven top musicians and pressed a limited edition of 100 copies of each track. Creatives from around the world then submitted unique sleeve designs, resulting in a collection of 700 one-of-kind 7" records to be auctioned for charity – the secret, as always, being you don’t know for certain which song or who made the sleeve you’re bidding on until you’ve won it.

Now the bidding is over and the secrets are out, we can reveal our sleeve for The Cure, War Song.

This year we wanted to do something different: As printers, we almost never produce one-offs—it’s just too impractical. In fact, it’s almost impossible. Even previous years Secret 7 sleeves have had several copies or proofs. This year we wanted to create a truly singular piece.

The idea came from the destructive, disorientating and fragmented nature of war, how it shatters and breaks, but ultimately how something new is always formed from the pieces.

We began by printing the word ‘war’ in our largest most scarred wood type, hand-inking each letter in tones of red to produce a very raw and distressed typographic artwork. These source prints were then cut apart, rearranged and very carefully inlaid to create a fractal, damaged, but still legible version of the original word. 

There were no proofs or seconds of this one.