Everything in one place
When you bake an Angel cake it is well known putting it in the oven makes it delightful, but what of the mixture that doesn’t get baked, well the evil turns into my evil cupcake-bake-spoon here!
An image from my ‘Book of Prints’. You can preview it here:
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1104995
My record label, Fruit Tree Records, have a new website up with all the audio available for download, designed with WordPress. http://www.fruittreerecords.com
We also have a twitter, youtube… come have a look.
http://twitter.com/FTreeRecords
http://www.youtube.com/fruittreerecords
http://www.myspace.com/fruittreerecords
http://www.last.fm/label/Fruit+Tree+Records
After seeing the BBC show ‘School of Saatchi‘ last week the contestants had to make some artwork for position on stone Hastings beach. I came up with this idea: It’s a large piece of reinforced glass moulded into a large Fresnet lighthouse lens with a metal frame on a concrete base. The public could look out to sea with the warping of the glass as well as it being like a circus hall of mirrors, so as well as decorative it’s fun! Being on a stone beach it wouldn’t be a risk to fire. Below are two diagrams, the first is how the lens works with light when in place in a lighthouse, the other in grey is an example of how the class is molded.
Saatchi’s six chosen artists are commissioned to produce large-scale pieces of art for the seaside resort of Hastings. When their work is constructed on the seafront in Hastings, the artists come face-to-face with the public and have the pleasure of discovering what they think. The final judgment on the artists’ success or failure is down to Charles Saatchi and his panel of advisers.
After looking at the tricks people do make limited editions I’m going on with this post. It was meant to be a how to do it yourself guide, but really there are far too many options so I would say this is a design suggestion post. Its long, brace yourself….
To start I can point you towards some fantastic links like Fat cat records guide to DIY Records.
It covers manufacturing to distributors and shops who might sell your product. It’s a good read as it covers the basics aside from promotion and touring.
Printed or Handmade.
This depends on so many issues like are you good with crafts? Are you design savvy? Do you have a big budget and how much of an investment is this really to you? I would say if you have a manager go for the printing option as if they are good they should know your market appears. For other people I would get any promotional items printed unless you have graphic design experience but even then for promotionals to radio, magazine and record company’s it nice to impress. Handmade done well or interesting can sell in independent music stores and as tour cds.
If you are like me you will probably be interested in the many ways you can fold and A4 page up to make a cd case. If you have a life however this will bore you and you wouldn’t give a damn. To make your own stuff at home you have to look around what you have. Everyone has access to an A4 printer. so fold some paper up and see what you get, or look below.
This packaging by pmkfa for lo-fi-fnk’s boylife album is designed to be cheap to make. Al tho it looks technical you can dumb it down and make these by hand.
A Harder cardboard case used for mailing.
Another design that can be cut out of paper.
The best designs are the simplest. A Book style design works well cause basically it only needs a guillotine and doesn’t work with anything other than 90 degree angles.
I saw these two examples. The one on the left has a simple fold. With a stylistic addition you could sew two buttons or a fold of paper / ribbon to hold the cd in. Or like on the right contain it in a booklet, you can do this by cutting lines into a page. I demonstrated this in the video below.
The top line is a ribbon to hold the cd in, the bottom line cut is to stop the cd falling out. It was cut into very cheap printer paper hence why its a little wobbly.
These images show other ways of securing cds with paper.
Printed.
CD Sleeve with fold.
Envelope style cd sleeve.
Some letter press cd sleeves, you can get simple and effective forms of printing. Like here or here. Or you could get a professional set with type from eBay like myself.
Book styled cd.
Making a book is a very easy thing. Fold some A4 paper in half and then bind it with staples or four holes and string. See this websites guide.
Lastly in this section is the poster book, a cd can be contained in a folded poster but also 7″ records can be folded into posters in poster-bags as you can see from the Jackson poster with the record.
Foam Buttons
You can get custom cards printed like Birthday cards. If you used that format with your designs on the cover and track listing on the inside rather than seasonal message you could get some foam buttons to secure the cd to the card. They are designed to hold cds to promotional booklets and other cooperate items but you could subvert the medium. Link for buttons.
Tracing Paper & Acetate
Both of these items you can print on to make an item clear / transparent. The slight downside to this is you have to trim the papers yourself unless you design yourself a cd holder made from an a4 page folded in half. Below are some examples of the style I was thinking of but are printed on the plastic it’s self. However inspiration can be gained from these and the minimal style helped with a modern typeface.
Interlacing normal or coloured paper paper with tracing paper in booklets can also look very stylish when printed in black and white.
Changing the format.
Standard Cd’s.
When designing a cd set for a friend I chose these Cd’s as they have no marks on them [like SONY / PHILLIPS ...] They are simply blank with no advertising. This isn’t just a style issue, It will make you look better in the eyes of your consumer. They also came with the black backing to them, you can also get them in a standard sliver style cd but I thought having the black data side made the product look a little more considered.
Online I found these variations on the cds but made to look like mini records. I have seen these a lot and I’m not sure if the look has been over used now. However if you get them online they seam to be cheap enough.
Mini Cds.
Link and the …plastic bags for them Link
These bags are for standard cds with jewel cases. However you could house the cd with some folded paper, acetate or tracing paper in this with the track listings The same effect can also be gained with PVC folded sleeves you can get online or from maplin.
Online you can also get pre-designed cd.
This site offers a sellection of printed blank cds.
Screen printed cds.
More Packaging
The Bag.
These fabric bags are easy to make from a long piece of fabric stiched at the sides. They look stylish I think and have a warm feeling of home made work. You could also print onto the fabric and insert a paper booklet.
I’m not sure if this is a cd case or not, but it gave me the idea of using a button to seal the cd in.
Another fabric exsample of a knitted cd case, however I have the feeling this is really cut from an old Jumper.
Sealed Bags
These bags are sealed with a tab of paper and some staples. You can get a few of these paper strips printed on your home printer and they are easy to design for. It means you can pack many items into a bag. Sealed bags are great for limited edition as it can void the value of the product; there for making it more collectible in-tact.
This record by Emilina Torrini was packed with dried leaves and hand signed by Emilina. Sealed in a bag with beautiful artwork its the perfect limited edition.
This 3″ cd is packed on to a 7″ square of card. With a re-sealable bag you can get to the record without cutting the plastic and voiding the value. These in my opinion are design icons. Its a great way to get attention for your product when its 3” squared. It also contains a free poster.
The same style of packaging but there is only a record in this bag, no card backing. The bag is also a thicker PVC.
A cheap 5” normal cd in a normal cd case, no printing on the case at all but only sealed with a large lable containing all the information. I think this has been designed well – with the fold over the top and track information. Simple and effective.
The PVC Sleeve
The typical way to package any lo-cost cd / promo.
100 PVC Sleeves – £0.99 Links
the bags you use dont have to be pvc, they could be brown paper bags like on a market stall, freezer bags or these metalic styled bags.
Paper Carrier Bags.
Price: £15
£13.04 (ex vat) VAT: £1.96
Arrow Packs
I found these resently. They are cd cases designed to be thin so you dont need the jewel case as you can keep the back paper, booklet and cd in one pouch. To me the idea is a little pointless for space saving, but you cuse chance the use of them and make them into a diffrent looking cd case.
There is a square pouch for the cd and booklet, the back has a larger pocket for the backpaper. If the back paper were to be printed on both sides you could have the bands information showing in big letters on the package [like in the blue pic].
ArrowStore all contents of original CD package
* – Hold 2 CDs, CD booklet and tray-card in one single CD Pro sleeve
ArrowSave space
* – Store 75+ CDs in 12 inches
ArrowProtect and prolong the life of your CDs
* – State-of-the-art CD protection with 2 layers of integrated fabric
An odd cd case I found on ETSY made from lolly pop sticks.
Some printers printing a record sleave.
A paper cut I printed as a demo for a friend and myself; more to prove it could be done, this is the cheapest way to hand print anything I think and can look nicer If I cleaned up the type.
Other designs for packaging going into the past this time. Using the defunct 78 as inspiration.
Make it yourself.
Something I resently saw was a Matmos album called “Work Work Work”
Highlights culled from Matmos’ 97-hour residency at the Yerba Buena Center For The Arts, which ran from November 7th to November 23rd 2003.
Each copy has a unique hand-collaged cover that incorporates a drawing of a museum guard by Darcy Bartoletti.
It got me wondering If all you need is some Paper CD Sleaves and some Photocopies.
Say five or six set of images you could spend an afternoon cutting them out with a craft knife and some glue. This way you can make up an original cover each time and it could be closer to art. It also reminds me of punk fanzine styles.
You don’t have to stop at photocopies. I normaly cut things out of magazines and you could do some painting on paper, then cut it into shapes [what i think is the badge for the guards hat] and really you can use any creative media like this, felt tip pens, spirograph.
My versions with the five original images below.
Beck – The Information.
The album is designed to be sold featuring blank packaging. Each CD contains 1 of 4 different sticker sheets, each featuring original images by 20 different artists commissioned and curated to form almost 250 different stickers in total. The idea is that the listener is then free to customize their CD or create their own album cover and booklet using the kit of source material contained within, participating in the album experience in a way that is highly reflective of Beck’s idiosyncratic style. The listener is then further encouraged to scan and upload their individual designs to share with other fans online. The packaging was conceived to clearly differentiate the physical album artifact from the digital download version of the release.
This is a more organised form of self made [and interactive] artwork. Placing the artwork in the listerners hands rather than the designers.
Printed Collage.
This cd I belive is a printed cover of a collage. However I liked the hand made style but that might be cuse its from a large label – would it work for a small band? I think if the text based info was made to look like fly-posters on the side of buildings it could.
DIY LoFi.
These two items are both for Patti Smith, as you can see one is just a pen scribble for the lable and the other is made from white paper stuck to the record bag then with a marker pen had the details put on.
Press the button to start the spinner, then squirt in the coloured paints to create your unique swirly picture. Maybe some artwork for a cd. Maybe a postcard. Eitherway I thought the idea was intresting. If you want to try bigger artworks I dont think it would be too hard to make some spinner to attack paper / card to.
Ink Stamps
You can get a stamp made of almost anything. Years ago I had a company logo made into a stamp that was 4 inches wide. It wasnt that exspensive and when making white label records such an item could be very useful. Its suppring how detailed you can make a rubbed stamp
This image is an exsample an online company give but you can play with the media well if you design something clean with vectors. Below is also a Kate Gibb print and stamp.
Embossed stamps & Seals
While working at a printing press one of my jobs was to stamp the prints with the printers logo with an embossed pad. This was another light bulb in how to subvert media. Say you have a card cd sleave, rather than print on it why not just stamp a logo on it. Most of the stamps work with a coin design [around the size of a uk 2p] but you can have them made bigger. The images can get detailed like some of the images below but as ever it should be a simple threshold black and white image. They are around £30 to have a coin made, then you need the machine to press them, thats about £10. I got some from a car boot sale with lovely gilt flowers painted down the sides and had the coins replaced. Altho it sounds expensive it can save on printing and work on other media like business cards and even badges. Doing the reserch everyone does I broused google images… the results.
Wafers
The additional extra for embossed stamps are wafers. These are normaly gold or red wax-like foils that you can stamp directly on. They come in other colours too.
Additional Packaging
I was looking about for paper bags when I came across the MidPac website. Link
From this site I found some items that could sex up some cd. These really come under additional packaging as it would be something to contain your cd and booklet or such. If you have more giveaways or larger items like a record it might be fun for vinyl but other than design they would just add more cost to a product and when your selling online or in independent shops its better to keep the price down as much as possible for the consumer and your production costs.
Wax Seals
These are good for mail order items to use to seal packs up. But for shops or touring when they will be stacked up and pushed about the wax might fall off. My friend has wax seals on his business cards.
UK & EC Prices (incl VAT)
from £30.99 small coin.
from £37.99 large or hex coin
Books
More items for the handmade section. Mum cd covers are based on old books and jornals. With a stamp print on the cover and sometimes holes cut out, it made me think of the Much-Ado-Notebooks made by ring binding old covers of damaged books to pages. If you go to some charity warehouses you can find books for about £1 per bag. I have long wondered about taking some of the books with near~ or blank backs and binding them into cd cases with some letter press text over them.
Some exsamples of ring binding, these are metal as the plastic comb binding looks cheap.
I used to get mine done at university as it was much cheaper than Rymans and Staples.
The other picture is of snap on rings, these are around £5 for 100 online.
Duct Tape / Gaffa
This Garbage record sleeve is made from unprocessed grey card the covered with pink duct tape. To get to the record you have to cut it down the side. It reminded me of the other items like book covers and wallets made from it. Done carefuly it can make an intresting addition to your artwork. You can even get your own tapes printed if you had a bold text covering the tape or a looping pattern it could look nice.
http://www.printedadhesivetapes.co.uk/bespoke-printed-adhesive-tape.htm
http://www.instructables.com/id/quality-duct-tape-wallet/
http://www.oboiler.com/store.html
Other exsamples of DIY Cases, with the details stuck to the cd cases.
If like me you made your own topic / classroom books at school you might recognise the re-used wallpaper to make this folder that looks like a gatefold record sleave.
There is a great artical here about embossing by hand with foil.
http://www.craftzine-digital.com/craft/vol04/?pg=143
And this is Aluminum foil tape and a stamp set for metal, I was thinking of just a bands name embossed like a lable. Now you could use the tape but also cut up foil food boxes / take away or card with foil glued on it then stamped or just some cut sheets of metal.
As well as this makemagazine video for embossing foil with glue.
I also saw these foam art stamps for children. With these you could make up custom covers on an afternoon.
I have been thinking to write this out for bands for some time so here I go. Its the art of the perfect limited edition in music. I will cover some of the basic tricks bands/record company’s do to make collectable items and in these times were people are buying less physical music its a common trick to entice people in.
I hope to then write a post about what you can do cheaply. Some of these items on the list might not be too useful if your a small band (due to the amount of items you would have to press) and most musical success is coverage and promotion. If you can get your record in to a shop that’s great and from there you can use some of these tricks. There lots of independent stores that might give you shop space like fopp used to [pre hmv take over.]
So to start with the Bonus Tracks.
Ever since the record industry has faced digital downloads the bonus track has been important. It’s a rather comic affair to be perfectly honest post 2002. Before you would have a 12 track album, now it would be a 10 track album + 2 bonus tracks! Its a very typical thing to see now on any record heading for the top ten. However pre 2002 Japan always used to do this by adding one more track than the rest of the worlds editions. Its routinely the first B-side from the albums single. For example Madonna’s Ray of Light single B-side was “Has to Be” and it was for the Japanese release. Post 2002 in Japan there has been more Bonus tracks in the UK style so Four extra tracks is a normal number. Maybe a B-Side some remixes or live tracks.
Coloured Vinyl.
This was the quickest form to make your product more attractive and interesting and has been used since records came about, (I had red children’s records when I was young) But really these days I think coloured vinyl is so easy to make that the markets swamped. I think clear vinyl is more interesting myself but still there is a lot of it about. The last is an okay example of mixed colours – I bought this for a friend who was and probably still is addicted to coloured records its a Stitches / le Shock 7″.
Picture Discs
Like the shaped record the picture disc can easily turn into a disgusting design disaster.
I have some beautiful examples luckily. The first is Morning runner’s ‘the great escape’. The illustration is by Kam Tang and the record is square so maybe it should be in the shaped record but still, its a fantastic work of design. Cased in a Plastic Wallet and then stickered with the record details its very easy on the eye – esp for something in black and white.
This Goldfrapp record almost ticks every box on how to make something a limited edition.
It has a sticky seal over the top with the record details on so you have to void it to play the tracks. It contains a track on the B side that hasn’t been pressed onto a Goldfrapp cd [other than one promotional cd]
Adding to this its a picture disc and the postcard artwork is Alison Goldfrapp’s own design. Topping it off its numbered in an edition of 3000 so if you just want to shift the stock and don’t care for the charts then this is a good way.
(2006 UK strictly limited edition 2-track 7″ vinyl PICTURE DISC including Flaming Lips remix of ‘Satin Chic’ which, in typical Lips psychedelic fashion, is named the ‘Through The Mystic Mix, Dimension, plus Alison & Will’s extraordinary version of The Ordinary Boys’ ‘Boys Will Be Boys’ as performed during their recent classic Live Lounge session on Jo Whiley’s BBC Radio 1 show, complete with Bonus Artwork Sticker!) **Limited to 3000 Copies Only** **Non-Chart Eligible**
Another style of bag and seal item is the Bjork Lmt Edition of ‘Post’ They also came with a handle so it would be a mini handbag.
Shaped & 3” Cd’s.
Now to anyone with an iMac or car stereo these are useless as they wont load in but to everyone with a normal Tray based cd player they are fine. They are still different but there’s something about shaped items that lacks seriousness for me. The 3″ cd is perfect for a design statement but I’m still at sea when it comes to the shaped. cds.
Shaped records.
These are more expensive to make and very hard to design well. For me they say something about the 1980′s that wasn’t good most of the time. However the top two are two modern copies and the Police one is an okay pass for the 80′s design wise.
Etched Vinyl
Another revival of late is etching. With bands shifting back to vinyl and all the additional ways of making something a limited addition it makes a record into an artwork. In my view the more like a drawing the etching is the more successful.
Some examples here of Portishead, Sigur Ros and the Foals then two older styles with Paul McCartney and some guy called Fischer.
From Engraving/Etching to Embossed
Embossing can be expensive like engraving but done well it can look great, some nice examples below.
Numbered Editions.
You will have noticed some of these are numbered, generally they don’t mention of how many issues these are numbered so yours could be 193 of 20,000. However it’s a simple way to make people feel they have something others might not. Usually limited editions are under 5,000 copys but if you look at art, typically the high end prints artists do don’t go more then 250.
Handmade.
Emiliana Torrini’s limited release for Lifesaver was a 7” record in a bag with sleeve. She also added dried pressed leaves and hand signed each record. I forget how many of these she said there were but her autograph was getting more simple as they went on.
Additional Items
Adding Artwork. Like the Lo-Af records adding posters or artwork can be a plus. I have seen postcards done for Enya and many pop bands. Esp teen bands. But this copy of the cures love song was slightly different in it contained a print on a slip of fabric. I’m guessing these are mass produced on some giant printer somewhere but it would look nice framed. It also comes in a box with the 7″ record so something a little different but based on the typical postcard option. These box sets retail for about £20-£25 at the moment probably due to the song also being fantastic.
Adding technology.
Now anyone with a cd burner can make some sort of CD-R with added data on it. Maybe a video or even a web page with some images / lyrics / song samples on. However with technology in the 90s bjork did made cdr’s but she also used VHS [all the rage back then].
It looks very high end in its box with three cds and the VHS. However when you think about it from inside the record company All three cds were being retailed as a three part set all at £3.99 each. So they would have been printed anyway. The VHS would have also been made for promotional’s to TV stations [see here] so all you would need to do is order more copys of the same pressings on cd. say 5000 rather than 3000. And then make a limited 2000 piece box set!
Regardless these items are a nice way to have music and make the fans feel like they are getting more for the money [they originally were £19.99] 3Xcd = £11.97 + VHS and Box. All the singles were packed in the same boxes with the single artworks and are very collectable now.
The Free-bee.
This cd was given away to the first 20,000 members of the bjork fan club. A simple promotional tool to get people to sign up in the same way bands offer a free mp3 for people who join their mailing lists. Like most of these bands the music given away isn’t commercial release, it’s a compilation of a MTV unplugged recordings.
Things Done Well
Lo-af Records:
This record label have been releasing 12″ artwork record sleeves but with a twist they hold a cd and come with a poster attached to the cover on a plastic wallet [or sometimes a record and no cd but never both]. The posters are also very interesting to me as its an old trick to have a poster but Lo-af’s posters are of unconnected artworks by artists and not just press photos of the musicians so making the package an interesting artistic mix.
So to break it down, Its a 12″ square of card with a typical plastic bag with sticky edge over it and from what I can make out the poster bag + cd are stuck to the front cover and then the whole thing is screen printed over with bold type. The reformatting of size for an item like a 7” or 3” cd by putting them into the frame of a 12” I thought was interesting.
I think the idea could be exspanded so it also contains a 12” or 7” record and mini 3” cd; in the days of digital dominance I thought this was a great idea as it would save you ripping the music from the record with a usb turntable. If they wanted to make these really collectable I would suggest heat sealing them so you have to cut the plastic and almost void it. However these are nice in that you can replace the sticky tab.
Some more of the high end tricks.
Garbage have had some of the most interesting collectables for 7” records due to the shifting of packaging ideals. Not always just paper and card. And if it did use paper and card it had something added.
Vow - Metal case.
An embossed slip case for the 7” single and now very collectable as its hard to find one that hasn’t been scratched. [The promo 7'' for subhuman was a rubber design just like this.]
The ‘G’ Album box set.
All the songs from the album on 7″ with the artwork also printed on 7” squares of paper and cased in a box. All the records have the artwork tainted in different colours so you know what song is what.
Why Do You Love Me
The 7” of why do you love me featured a plain grey card 7” sleeve but then was wrapped around with pink gaffa tape so you had to cut the tap to get to the record – such voiding the product. But a radical shift in packaging. Then a transparent sticker over the top shows you the details. However this could have also been screen printed.
Stupid Girl
Another shift with the ‘G‘ logo and this time its a fabric record sleeve with a plastic G stitched onto the cover. This copy is then placed in a PVC surround then stickered with the details. Inside is a typical card record sleeve with the details of production and tracks and helps retain the shape of the fabric. There is a blue and red issue of this. Both the same track listing so really its only the fabric and sticker that needed to be changed. If there are 2000 of the blue and 2000 of the red they would only have to press 4000 records with the same internal sleeve so saving money on pressing too.
Only Happy When It Rains.
This features the Die Cut. Basicly a die cut is a stamp like a cookie cutter. In this case the 12″ has the ‘G’ showing the internal record sleeve.
Milk.
This is a simple record cover but with a hologram of milk flowing over the ‘G’ logo.
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