The Voyager Golden Record
Macroscopic partnered with Ozma Records to bring the Voyager Golden Record—originally created for extraterrestrial audiences—to Earth for the first time. Our team spearheaded the development, design and release of the record, which led to a record-breaking Kickstarter campaign and, ultimately, a GRAMMY for Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package.
Design
Music
Culture
Arts
An Untapped Story
The Voyager Golden Record, launched in 1977 aboard the Voyager I and II spacecraft, represents humanity’s collective best—a phonographic time capsule of life on Earth intended for extraterrestrials. However, no version of the record had ever been made accessible to humanity itself. This gap left an unparalleled cultural artifact confined to deep space, depriving people on Earth of a physical connection to a symbol of human hope, creativity, and potential.
Identifying and Reimagining
Together, Macroscopic and Ozma Records identified a profound opportunity: to awaken latent desire for this historic artifact by translating it into a tangible product for Earth’s audience. To bring the project to life, we needed to develop a compelling product narrative and design strategy that would both introduce, and honor the legacy of, this untapped cultural treasure for a new generation.
Reimagining Humanity’s Gift to the Cosmos
We worked hand-in-hand with NASA’s JPL, The Sagan Institute, and the original Voyager Golden Record team members to reimagine the record’s essence through excavating original images encoded on the album, remastering of the archival music and spoken word tracks, and incorporating new images of our solar system sent back to us by Voyager.
To create an impactful product narrative, we interpreted the original album through three distinct lenses – an exquisitely curated musical masterpiece, an objet d’art, and a scientific inquiry into humanity’s place in the cosmos.
Crafting both the physical and conceptual experience, we curated a bespoke boxed set—featuring a hardbound book, a three-LP triptych, and a gold foil print—designed to resonate with nostalgia and curiosity for humanity’s biggest questions. By leveraging the power of crowdfunding, we transformed this offering into a movement, engaging a global community of supporters who shared in its vision.
An Aspirational Vision
This message serves as a comprehensive portrait of life on Earth through our music, art, languages, natural world, and science. The contents of these records serve as a representation of our ideal self — something we can aspire to as much today as the day they were launched, and into our future.
An Interstellar Success
The Voyager Golden Record box set was met with unprecedented enthusiasm.
- Cultural Impact: The project raised $1.4 million on Kickstarter, breaking the platform’s record for the largest grossing music release in its history—nearly 7x the original goal.
- Critical Acclaim: The release won the GRAMMY Award in 2018 for Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package.
- Inspirational Legacy: By bringing humanity’s “gift to the cosmos” back to Earth, the project redefined the role of design, art, and storytelling in inspiring hope, wonder, and resilience.
This project serves as a reminder of what we can achieve when we are at our best—and that the future is truly up to all of us.
The Voyager Golden Record
Bringing the interstellar message to Earth for the first time and sparking global enthusiasm for the endeavor. Creating the Grammy award winning Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package now included in the permanent collection of the V&A Museum and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
Design
Music
Culture
Arts
Inventing new means to bring to Earth the legendary album that's been called a gift from humanity to the cosmos. The Voyager Golden Record is a phonograph that was sent into space on the Voyager I and Voyager II spacecraft in 1977 with the intention to share our human story. The story of humanity, culture, the story of life on earth without using a single word. A story of presenting the best version of ourselves, seeing hope, wonder and possibility. Without any copies for the public, this story of humanity was only to be listened to by extraterrestrials. Currently at 15 and 13 billion miles away respectively, both spacecraft are the only human made objects to ever leave our Solar System, thus the farthest archive of humanity from the place we can home.
Never released on Earth, Macroscopic leadership partnered with Ozma Records and worked with original members of the original Voyager Golden Record team as well as The Sagan Institute at Cornell University, and NASA’s archive at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in bringing the contents of the record to humanity here on Earth for the first time. Through thorough excavation of the original images encoded on the album, remastering from archive the music and spoken word on the album and carefully pairing the contents of the record with the images of our solar system sent back to us by Voyager - we curated a bespoke comprehensive boxed set which included a hardbound book a three LP triptych and a gold foil print. The project broke Kickstarter’s record for largest grossing music release in the history of the platform - $1.4 million backed, nearly 7 times the original goal and won a Grammy in 2018 for Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package.
The Voyager Interstellar Record is a reminder of what we can achieve when we are at our best—and that our future really is up to all of us.
Approach
To design a deeply covetable compendium that opens minds to possibilities, reminding us of what can be achieved when we’re at our best - that the future is up to us. We saw the original artifact through three different lenses. As an exquisitely curated music compilation, the Voyager record is an inviting port of entry to unfamiliar yet entrancing sounds from other cultures and other times. As an objet d’art and design, it represents deep insights about communication, and the power of appealing to our best selves. In the realm of science, it raises fundamental questions about who we are and our place in the universe. We were driven to have the project serve as a reminder of our potential to ignite curiosity and wonder through the intersection of science and art.