SRS PACKAGING.

With my final hand in looming closer, I'm trying to utilise all the hours going to get the finishing touches done on my work. I completed the SingRamonaSing branding project about a month and half ago but realised I hadn't really done any work on the product placement side of things. I hadn't printed it out either so needed to do this asap really.

As the band were pretty happy with the work I'd produced, there wasn't much else left to do other then mount the print outs up to make sure everything fitted smoothly. I wanted to use a really good quality paper/card for the printing as I think it can have a huge effect on the buying. You can always tell if things have been printed cheaply and for me personally, less likely to keep good care of it. I've got a few vinyls that are a bit bashed about on the corners but I'm not overly bothered as they've been printed on a glossy material that doesn't do the artwork any justice whatsoever.

With this in mind, I decided to use 280gsm cartridge paper for the first test run of the cd sleeve. I got it printed at the local art shop, using their huge laser printer as it seemed to be the better option. The printer at uni can apparently take weights up to 280gsm but anything heavier then about 100 seems to play hell with it and causes more trouble then its worth. The print out seemed a little darker then the digital file but I expected it to differ slightly. The line quality wasn't how I expected it too look though and had a fuzzy almost glowy thing going on. I wanted it all much crisper and cleaner looking but that's what tests are for I suppose. I've put that down to that in order to get the worked printed where I did, I had to reduce the file size so that it would fit in an email. Another technical blip that occurred was that the ink didn't seem to take to the paper very well. It was almost like it had missed the heat sealing process out and rubbed off too easily from general handling. The lack of ink made it look worn and ancient, which to some extent looked quite good, but on the whole it wasn't what I required.

Ink not sealed properly.

Non the less, I still mocked up the CD to see if the layout needed tweaking. I didn't want to use a scalpel to score lines for the fold as it was going to reveal the ice white of the paper used, so I decided to try and fold it as neat as possible using a metal ruler. The ink came off even more down the spine  and the fold looks dead messy so I think next time I'll have to opt for the scalpel. I decided to print the net of the CD as once piece that just needed to be folded vertically, so that the front and back joined, then down the middle to create the book like look. This didn't go to plan either. With the paper having a grain to it, only one of the fold worked well. As the second fold was pushing against the grain, it forced the paper to curve rather then achieving a crisp fold. I managed to glue it all together but it had a slight warping to it as I hadn't taken into account the space needed for the spine fold. This consequently effected the design of the imagery and things like the logo in the corner, wasn't lined up with the border of the card anymore. The alignment had shifted due to the front cover being bent round to create the spine.

Horrible fold.

Having seen the flaws with my first mockup, I just needed to adjust little bits with the printing and layout method to get it to look okay.  For the second test, I printed it out on 300gsm water colour paper on my inkjet printer at home. I thought the colour balance would be worse then the more expensive printer before but I was pleasantly surprised. The cheaper printing method seemed to be more accurate then the other and matched almost perfectly to the screen version. I decided to print the front and rear separately this time and fix them together using tabs. This meant that the grain of the paper would play in my favor for the fold and would make it look much neater. I lightly scored the folding joints, and because this card was much thicker, it didn't break the inked surface as much. I'm really pleased with how this version turned out and would happily use it as a finished piece. The texture of the card has an expensive feel to it and looks professional compared to the first nightmare.

Better print.

The whole appearance seemed a lot better, mainly down to the fact that I could use the full quality file rather then the low resolution one. The matte card seemed to work completely fine with the printer ink so I'm not entirely sure what happened before. I thought that I was going to have to resort to using a glossy finish paper but am really glad I've managed to avoid it.

When the project was first set, I spoke to the band about perhaps producing a limited run of vinyl versions, budget dependent. The verdict is still unsure, but to try and persuade them, I've made a couple of different formats so they can see how it looks and have something tactile, appose to just a file on an email. I created an insert to feature in the CD pocket but then the design of the packaging changed so that this was no longer needed. Printing a vinyl version gave the chance to re-visit this and play around with some typography a bit more and make a feature piece of one of the illustrations. The 7 inch vinyl sleeve has a different format to the CD, consisting of a just a pocket. This meant that only the front and rear imagery is needed so I've incorporated this into the insert piece. Having looked at other 7 inch ep designs, I've always preferred the ones that had an extra piece inside to keep, sometimes folding out to make a poster. I tried to do this with the piece that I made.

Much happier with the bigger printing.

 I prefer the larger format as I think that my work looks better. Some of the elements of the illustrations are quite detailed and seemed to get slightly lost on the smaller version of the CD. With the vinyl being quite a substantial amount bigger, I think it looks tons better and you can pick out more of the hand drawn elements that are seen through the digital files. Using the vinyl gave me slightly more work to make as I had to consider what was going to feature on the discs. The ones made previously for the CD discs didn't fit the format and would have looked a bit weird. Traditionally, vinyl discs contain the tacks that feature on each side of the disc, sometimes having a logo or image to accompany.

I didn't want to over crowd the relatively small space so decided to just include title of each track name alongside the bands logo. The white on black seems to work well and compliment the colour illustration as I didn't want to draw too much attention away from the pack illustrations. The simple design seems to do the job required so I'm happy with how it all looks.

The final step was to think about packaging and how it would be displayed when sold. To do this I visited a couple of record shops and came to a conclusion that majority were wrapped in a clear plastic cellophane. I managed to get hold of a roll and cut it down to size scoring the edges to get a neat fold. Once the product was wrapped neatly, I made a sticker using the bands logo to seal it all together. Ideally, it could do with being a little tighter but works well. When design the imagery I purposely left a blank space at the bottom of the rear side. This was to make room for a bar code so I added one to make sure it looked decent enough.

Attempt at packaging.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with how it all looks once printed out and in its correct format. Things can look much different on screen compared to printed pieces but I'm happy with the results. Even though I'm a little sick of seeing it, having worked on it for the last few weeks, its great to see it all tied up and finished, hopefully being put in to production soon. I've enjoyed working on my first live brief as its kept me on my toes but think its definitely played in my favor and led me to produce some of my favorite pieces of work to date. Apologies for the massive ramble and cheers if you managed to finish it without falling off your chair.