Research - Innovation in DVD Packaging Design by Charlotte Rivers (book)

• "one problem the increasing popularity of downloadable music has posed is how to keep consumers buying music in-store? Music companies have had to look at ways of encouraging consumers to continue to buy music products on CD and vinyl." Social context - the record sleeve has to be eye-catching and seen as a collector's item or special in a way that would attract the audience to want to obtain it rather than just downloading it as most popular Experimental Pop has been released while access to the internet is common. 
• "This book looks at an international collection of innovative graphic design within the area of DVD cover design and packaging, and explores both the creative inspiration behind the work (the artwork, typography, materials, printing techniques and formats) and the practical considerations and restrictions (record company stipulations, inclusion of essential material, and budgets.)" Although this book focuses in on DVD cover, it will allow me to think and research more into processes that will affect my design for the vinyl cover. It fits the brief as it's about innovative graphic design work and my vinyl will need to push the limits not only for the project but for the purpose of representing the innovations within Experimental Pop. 

I looked for package designs that would relate to my initial ideas and ones that push my ideas further and the ideas of conventional package design. 

This cover was in response to a brief to "create something different that would make a strong impression on people and have an element of humour". The outer cover is made using egg carton material and the DVD has a printed image of eggs. This relates to my initial ideas as it explores the ideas of produce and grocery packaging from the collage workshop - "Fresh". It's also interesting in justifying my choice of package material and using the vinyl to complete the whole image of the cover as there's often a hole in the packaging to convey the vinyl. 

The concept behind this cover was to create a "low-cost, easy to produce, economical to post package that could be used as a promotional piece to distribute to Pfadfinderei customers."  "Printed on matte paper is a pattern based on the idea of a cable, which is carried onto the disc itself, this time in colour" This cover represents the company's values through its environmentally friendly approach which conveys the importance of considering the context of my vinyl. The pattern of the wire is most interesting to me as wires contrast with the idea of environmentally friendly but still relate to the company as they're a design agency that specialises in motion graphics. The two-tones relates to my screen-printing process and the idea of using a pattern throughout the whole design is interesting.

I find this to be one of the most interesting package designs as it was a design for a promotional piece for the Royal Norwegian Embassy and based on the word "strong" which is what Stærk means in Norwegian. It's interesting as their concept is based on being lightweight, compact and plastic-free which contrasts with the general idea of "strong" but is a very stand-out and memorable piece of design which is where "Strong" may be played into. The choice of colours and bold typeface is quite strong too - pushing the concept further than anything obvious. It's also interesting to my project as it relates to consumer culture as it's tear-away packaging.

 This packaging is for the film "Memento" and therefore its concept is based on being very personal. The packaging is designed so that the consumer would feel as though they are looking at the main character's medical records and there are four sheets of "loose-leaf paper" that convey elements of the DVD's structure and contents. This is interesting in thinking about contents of my record design - how can I bring in elements that represent the structure/contents of the music but not be too obvious?

 The idea behind this packaging was to "mirror" the live concerts of Kylie Minogue and therefore he used a high shine slipcase and very reflective, conventional DVD. Thinking about how choice of packaging materials reflect my concept. How can conventional be interesting? Pop is conventional but has to be experimental conventional for my genre.

 These two designs are really interesting for me to look at in terms of mainly using text to convey the contents in an interesting way. The first cover is on transparent pack to enable the consumers to look inside at the small booklet and suggesting that the contents are not as conventional as other genres. The second continues conventions from previous releases of the series however pushes it further by moving slightly away from the minimalistic way. Looking at previous vinyls for my tracks - how can I push their ideas further? How can I do this with just text in a heavily image based genre?

 This design is for Duran Duran's Greatest hits. The concept behind was to acknowledge "Duran Duran's early videos have had a huge influence on shaping the pop-music video-making that we see today" but in an "austere and understated" way. It's a strip based collage that takes screenshots from many of Duran Duran's music videos which is something I can look into as it represents the importance of visuals in my microgenre but in a less obvious way. A starting point for more developments?