Hasta La Ideas

I actually ordered a special edition version of Brian Eno and David Byrne’s Everything That Happens Will Happen Today album about four months ago – and it finally turned up last week… Here are some photos of the package – as well as a few other music packaging efforts that have caught our attention since getting back to work this year…

The Sagmeister-designed special edition of Everything That Happens Will Happen Today comes packaged in a round tin with a little house on it. Remove the lid (and a chip within plays the sound of some hammering followed by the sound of a creaking door) to reveal a grassy-looking disc containing the album. Underneath is a similar looking disc that contains the bonus material – a short film about the album by Hillman Curtis and four exclusive, bonus tracks – a miniature book, a small capsule (and a disclaimer stating that said pill contains calcium carbonate, the active ingredient found in common antacids, consult a doctor yadda yadda…), and a small dice:

And here are flat files of some the artwork from the miniature book, which is also the artwork that adorns the ‘normal’ edition of the album. Design by Sagmeister. Illustration by Stephan Walter).

Andreas Döhring of Designliga created the artwork for Zombielicious, the new album from Zombie Nation. The screenprinted CD comes in a transparent jewel case with no booklet of artwork. Instead, the artwork visible on the front side consists of 2 layers: a white print on the surface of the jewel case (look closely!) and a screenprinted CD housed within. Nice. Label: UKW (ukw-records.com)

OK, this isn’t a commercial release but I wanted to show it because it’s great. It’s a compilation by designer Adam Faja, created as part of his contribution to an annual compilation CD swap organised by a group of graphic designers and which landed on my desk just before Christmas. Faja packaged a pink CD in a black floppy disk case and printed the tracklist in a typewriter font on lined card. Old school but gloriously tactile and nostalgic all at the same time.

Final Song is a compilation from label Get Physical. The concept of the comp is to approach various DJs and producers and ask them to nominate the song they’d most like to have played at their funeral and a brief explanation of their choice. Included are the selections of the likes of Gilles Peterson, DJ Hell, Laurent Garnier (who, perhaps surprisingly, selects a Radiohead track), David Holmes and Coldcut. As with all Get Physical releases, The Hort has art directed the packaging, with the cover sporting a rather nice cut paper illustration.

This is another non-commercial release but I thought it warranted inclusion as I rather like it. It’s a 4-DVD box set designed by studio-3’s Ryszard Bienert, for Polish artist Leszek Knaflewski as an appendix to the catalogue produced for his Crossroads versus Roundabouts exhibition which took place in Gallery Piekary in Poznan, Poland.

The 35 x 35 x 10 cm cardboard box has been screenprinted with the text – which contains a code only decipherable by the artist, according to Bienert. Inside the box, two sponges house and protect the four DVD discs, the bright colours of which relate to the four sections in the exhibition catalogue. Cardboard and sponge are also relevant material choices as these are the artist Knaflewski’s mediums of choice…

“The box has been produced in a limited amount of 50 and contains four different short films on separate DVDs,” explains Bienert. The box will be available for purchase through website 3-group.eu from mid January. Each box is signed by the artist.