“It all started in a very spontaneous way. I don’t want to kill the dream of people who say, ‘He’s the mastermind, he knew exactly where he was going.’ I didn’t write any master plan. I had no clue.”

For Pedro Winter, somewhat fittingly, it began at a party. Having managed Daft Punk since 1996, he already knew a thing or two about the intersection between music and imagery. And after founding the artist management company Headbangers Entertainment in 2002, Winter was now making plans for a record label.

In early 2003, a young graphic designer, Bertrand Lagros de Langeron, was attending a soirée in Paris. He’d just completed his first project – a book cover – and was excited to share the work with his friends. By chance, Winter happened to be there. He spotted de Langeron’s designs and was struck by the similarities to his company’s logo.

“Pedro saw it and asked if I wanted to meet,” de Langeron recalls. “I was like, ‘yeah, sure’, never thinking that it would happen. But Pedro doesn’t drink, so the next day, we actually met. It would be pretentious to say the rest is history, but if there’s a time to say so, it’s now.”