Packaged. Branded.
I've been putting the finishing touches on the DVDs for the cast of OnStage Productions' Pajama Game, which include all of the photos I took at a recent shoot. I've provided these DVDs to other companies in the past, but this time I wanted to take a different approach.
In the past, I'd been happy to use plastic cases for the finished product, which certainly look shiny:
However, I kind of got tired of forking over cash to some international, big-box store to put more plastic out into the world. Thus, I started looking for a more environmentally-responsible solution.
Though this site will tell you I'm a photographer, I am also a lot of other things, like a writer, a sculptor, and, when the wind is southerly, I know a pica from a pdf. I appreciate clean, attractive design, and, whenever possible, I try to do clean, attractive design for myself. That drive lead me to the lovely people at Moo (yes, that is a refer a friend link), and I designed the following for them to print off:
Coming back to the DVD packaging dilemma, in the current age of digital photography, folks don't print as many pictures as they used to, and my clients almost exclusively request only digital copies of the photos from their shoots. These are then posted on websites or social media, and the only concrete thing that remains of our exchange is a DVD. So I combined my past experience with marketing materials and branding, combined it with a knowledge of all of Moo's wonderful offerings (STICKERS!), and I got to thinking outside the plastic box.
Along with the interest in design and sculpting comes an interest in Making Things. I had made the following wooden business cards as memorable handouts for Anime North this weekend (since I figured I'd be handing out a lot of cards and didn't want to exhaust my supply of Moo cards):
Once I had already created that stamp, it was easy to repurpose it, and, after a quick trip to a Canadian supplier of recycled cardboard sleeves, I produced the following:
It's simple, but combine it with some different branded Moo stickers, and you've got a blank canvas that can be redesigned as needed. What's more, with the exception of the physical DVDs, the thing is recyclable, and I feel like it's moderately prettier and more memorable than a plain paper DVD sleeve.
