Hasta La Ideas

Malcolm Garrett has collaborated with Artomatic to create the unusual packaging for House of Illustrious, a new ten-disc release from The Clarke & Ware Experiment, the musical collaboration between Martyn Ware (Erasure, Depeche Mode, Yazoo) and Vince Clarke (Human League, Heaven 17)…

Ware and Clarke released two albums on Mute records back in 1999 and 2001 but this new deluxe release comprises 8CDs of unreleased material plus the original two albums, Pretentious and Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle.

Ware turned to Malcolm Garrett (Images & Co) to design the release and he in turn got in touch with Tim Milne at Artomatic to help create “a desirable object”. The result is that the 10 discs are interleaved with soft paper inserts and sandwiched between two 8mm thick clear acrylic discs held together on a stainless steel spindle (made in Sheffield, Ware’s hometown) that screws into said acrylic discs.

The acrylic-ended block of discs comes housed snugly in a water-jet cut circular hole in a block of high density foam that also bears the laser-etched Illustrious logo devised by Garrett for the release.

A 12 page, concertina-folded booklet is also included in the package which displays album notes and track listing info on one side…

…and the Illustrious logo on the reverse:

Limited to 1000 copies, each of the packages are numbered and signed by both Ware and Clarke. The release is available to purchase (Mute, £79.95) from the Teletext-reminiscent website for the release at clarkewareboxset.com (grab below).

Design Malcolm Garrett
Production Tim Milne of ARTOMATIC

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The January issue of Creative Review is all about the Money – well, almost. What do you earn? Is everyone else getting more? Do you charge enough for your work? How much would it cost to set up on your own? Is there a better way of getting paid? These and many more questions are addressed in January’s CR.

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