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Ethel’s “Heavy” CD Packaging
Production Method
Letterpress
Design
Mark Kingsley
Printing
Paper: Aardvark Letterpress
Disc production and printing: Ross Ellis
Brooding colors, fancy line work and ornate patterns letterpressed with precision succeed in making Heavy, heavy. But there is no dark without light, evidenced by the cheeky black-on-black bar code joke on the back cover. Encore!
Dimensions (Width × Height × Depth)
7 in × 7 in
Page Count
–
Paper Stock
Muscletone Speckletone Black 140 cover / DUPLEXED Classic Linen Red Pepper 80 cover
Number of Colors
1-color per item
Varnishes
–
Binding
–
Typography
Gutenberg
AWConquerorCarved-Regular
Stereopticon
Baskerville
A less than pretty sticker with a properly contrasted barcode.
Project Description
Ethel is America's premiere new music string quartet. It had been six years since their last album "Light." So the album title HAD to be "Heavy." Thus the application of the Spinal Tap initiative: a black on black cover. With calligraphic flourishes to counter.Since new music string quartets don't really get that much press, a special package was in order. This way a casual mention in an interview, the odd size displayed in a store, and other interstitial moments encourage actually buying the physical product. Letterpress was the only printing method that could both feel special in the audience's hand and reproduce the fine linework.
Printing the UPC code black-on-black was a joke on futility and a nod to the gradual decline of record stores. But that possibility of a retail experience (no matter how slim) is why we stickered it over the shrinkwrap.
Production Lesson(s)
There is a standard workflow -- printing, binding, disc manufacture, assembly -- which creates a standardized product which can fit in standardized distribution channels. In stepping outside into letterpress, we had to recreate this workflow, which added estimation and production time.
Post Author
Jessica Mullen
Writer for UnderConsideration LLC.
More: Online / On Twitter
Date Published
April 25, 2012
Filed Under
CD Packaging
Letterpress
Tagged with
CD packaging
letterpress
About
FPO (For Print Only), is a division of UnderConsideration, celebrating the reality that print is not dead by showcasing the most compelling printed projects.
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About UnderConsideration
UnderConsideration is a graphic design firm generating its own projects, initiatives, and content while taking on limited client work. Run by Bryony Gomez-Palacio and Armin Vit in Bloomington, IN. More…
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