PRINT STUDY 2 - CURRIER & IVES

Iliad, Inc. is a Nashville based music production, marketing and recording company who over the years recorded hundreds of sessions with the London Symphony, the London Philharmonic Orchestra and many other world renowned organizations in addition to pop, rock and other genres. Logic House Media has designed over fifty projects for Iliad, Inc., in conjunction with their clients including many platinum selling custom albums for companies like Victoria's Secret, Hershey's, DTS Surround, Brown & Haley, Hermes, Barnes & Noble, Cracker Barrel and others.

Currier & Ives is a famous mass printing and artwork company from the mid 19th century. Their prints are timeless and capture many of life's simple pleasures. Iliad, Inc. devised a co-branded series of classical music projects offered through multiple distribution outlets. The highly regarded and household name "Currier & Ives" gave a natural market for this co-branded venture.

Out of respect and admiration of the Currier & Ives name and wonderful artwork, Logic House Media thoroughly reviewed a plethora of art materials to include in package design. Some of the CDs would be sold individually and some in various "collections", packaged in different forms of box sets. The need for a consistent graphical theme was imperative, no matter what form the CDs and box sets were sold.

Much of the art needed to be digitized and was delivered in composite form. We started by dissecting the artwork and finding portions would could use across multiple packages. For instance, we used bits and pieces of of clouds, snow, scrolls, trees and other objects already in the artwork to create new textures and graphic elements, Many of the original pieces were altered slightly to help them "fit" in the size perspective of CD cover art, traycards and different box set configurations.

We started with cover design and used a "snow puff cloud" to back the Currier & Ives logo over the artwork. For these CD and box set packaging concepts, it was important for the logo to appear at the top, where potential buyers would recognize the brand in a CD bin shelf. The same effect was used on the bottom of the cover art to serve as a background for the album title and other other information.

Most of the original Currier and Ives artwork was designed to print in large format, not for the limiting size of CD jewel cases and boxes. Some was in a landscape or portrait perspective that wouldn't allow proper scaling to get the most out of the central art theme. Many trees, clouds, snow and even people and animals were edited in to give the proper attention to each piece's theme.

                  

After the first two or three CD covers were finished, we had enough data and experience with the art to formulate a plan for multiple box set configurations. Because offset printing (most mass production photographic printing) is limited to 4 colors (a mix of cyan, magenta, yellow and black) we used a simple technique of adding a "gloss varnish" to specific parts of the artwork to help it stand out or "pop".

In all, there were over 14 different individual albums which were either sold individually or in over 12 different box set configurations, including "tall" boxes, box sleeves, compact boxes and metal tins.