CD CASE SPECS: 5.59 '' x 4.29 ''
BOOKLET SPECS: 4.7 '' x 4.7 '', 32 pages
CD DISC SPECS: 4.7 ''
This was a personal project I worked on for myself and it was quite an ambitious one. It is a double album CD for a conceptual David Bowie compilation album complete with a cover, booklet, tray card, and 2 discs that I designed.
Despite the declining popularity of CDs and physical media in general, I came up with this project idea because I always had a fascination with music packaging design and just how many small details and factors that goes into making these things that we overlook or take for granted. It was also a great way for me to learn and experiment with print and type size, as I actually did test prints of these designs with an empty CD jewel case to ensure the readability of the text on the packaging was legible. I considered also designing a vinyl version but I just sticked to just a CD for sake of time.
This conceptual David Bowie compilation album contains at least one hit song from all of his 26 standalone studio albums. I chose him as my subject for this project since he was the most prolific musician I could think of and a greatest hits album would’ve been easier to make than conceptualizing one from scratch. His discography is reflected through a 5x5 square grid throughout the packaging’s artwork and logo. The grid actually contains only 25 squares since I omitted The Buddha of Suburbia album from the cover artwork as it was his least popular album and I wanted to keep the logo nicely even in height and length. I integrated a song from that album with Black Tie White Noise that was both released the same year in 1993.
For the art direction of the album, I wanted to keep it moderately minimalistic. The cover artwork featured the grid logo with each square representing his albums in chronological order. The artwork of the albums are simplified and scaled down to their color palette and swatches. They symbolize a retrospective, blurred view of his career. The gird is framed in a solid black square to contrast it with the white background. Much of the same concept applies with the back cover.
Alongside the grid logo, I also used Bowie’s initials “DB” in lower case letters as design motifs since they work cohesively together and their letter forms are nearly symmetrical. This is reflected through the discs, where side “d” represents disc 1, and side “b” represents disc 2. They’re also featured on the album’s front and back side.
As for the booklet, it contains informational things like lyrics, credits, etc. Each page with a song’s lyrics would feature an enlarged image of their album’s respective cover from the grid.
