Hasta La Ideas

Fast Company has put together an interesting piece about the design of U2‘s new album and how it’s the band’s answer to downloads. Following that same route as other bands, like Metallica‘s Grammy-winning packaging, the group had its designers put together a whole slew of material into one fancy box, filled to the brim with booklets, movies, photographs, and everything else they could think to cram in there, hoping all of it would serve its purpose of being consumed as a physical object instead of a quick ten dollar download. It’s a good look at the function of music packaging, though we do call fault a little for Fast Company writing an entire piece about the design of something without once mentioning the name of the designers behind it, but fortunately we’re here to pick up their slack and point you to this story about Steve Averill and Shaughn McGrath‘s work in creating the whole thing, including this interesting little tidbit:

McGrath also decided to put in the graphic artist’s equivalent of a “hidden track.” Somewhere in the liner notes, there is a reference to something famous in the fields of art and science. McGrath says that not even the band know it’s there, but he expects it to be uncovered by a sharp-eyed fan “just hours after the album goes on release.”

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