I just watched a video by an electronica artist from Brooklyn named Moldover. Yeah, I’d never heard of him before this video either. He’s done a brilliant job designing the packing for his first CD. He built a light-based theremin and designed the track listings into the circuit board! He’s got three different versions of the packaging available: one is a printed cardboard (no theremin involved), one with the printed circuit board as the tray and insert (full-size theremin here), and one with the paper-printed version of the circuit board and mini-theremin. The full and mini theremins also have a headphone jack so you can listen in private or pump your creativity to a sound system. Pretty amazing! Check out the video below to see the artist explain it:
Universal uses eco-friendly CD packaging
I read this story this week and kinda shrugged about it. So what? Then I got a copy of Apple’s Leopard and discovered it had this very same packaging. Apple’s discs normally come in a CD sleeve, which I then remove from the box, label, and stick in a file folder for that computer. This packaging was built right into the box, so it presented a small challenge. Small, since I just cut the CD holder part away from the box and viola, problem solved. I do really like the new packaging though. It’s just efficient enough to hold the CD in, yet allow me to easily pull it back out, without any broken plastic tines or cracked cases, and its only slightly thicker than a sleeve (good for filing).
I read the story on hypebot and I opened it up again today to post the link (above). Overall, while it’s great that Universal is moving to an eco-friendly packaging, I fully agree with a commenter on the hypebot article. If Universal was truly interested in “being green”, they’d do away with additional CDs and only offer digital downloads, which are the greenest form of music distribution anyway. However, since some people have to have a physical copy, this at least presents a convince-the-suburbanites-we’re-eco-friendly way of packaging a disc. It could have actually helped if they had made this move ten years ago though. Either way, if I ever print a physical CD, I’ll check into using this packaging too.
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