When the first CDs came on the market in the nineteen-eighties, most music lovers were happy. The time of noisy and scratched vinyl LPs was over for good.
And the record companies were happy, too. Very happy. Because they could reissue their back catalogs at low costs and sell them on the then very expensive CDs. It was the last time that record companies made big money before music went on line and the downloading started.
What always troubled me, was the bad art work of the CDs. I’m not talking about the front cover. I’m talking about the back cover. Usually they reprinted the original vinyl art work. But on the back cover and on the CD itself they used ugly small square boxes in order to number the songs.
All companies used these ugly square boxes. Maybe the wanted to express with these boxes, that this sound carrier was digital indeed. Probably the square boxes were used as a symbol for digital, and should have indicated that this new thing is well organized, clean and modern. I don’t know. Over time the ugly boxes started disappearing. But you still can find them on a lot of CDs.
I also wonder why they came up with the ugly plastic cases. But that’s another story.
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16. June, 2009 at 10:12 pm |
This is sooo true. I’m working on designing artwork for my upcoming CD and grapple with one question almost every day: what my artwork is as ugly as some of the other CDs out there (even newer CDs are ugly as sin). One can only hope…I’m not a designer but I’m doing the best I can. Here’s what I have so far if anyone cares to take a look: http://bit.ly/12MIw4
Aron