DESCRIPTION "Time Machine" CD CLIENT Neil Couvillion DATE July 2009 DESIGN CREDITS Combustion Design and Photography: Ben Couvillion PRINT CREDITS Stumptown Printers TYPE CREDITS Gotham by H&FJ Clarendon

QUANTITY PRODUCED 1,000 PRODUCTION COST $750 PRODUCTION TIME 2.5 Weeks DIMENSIONS: WIDTH × HEIGHT × DEPTH 4.875 in × 5.5 in × 0.25 in PRINT METHOD Offset PAPER STOCK Uncoated Recycled Chipboard NUMBER OF COLORS 2 Spot BINDING Hand-folded, no Adhesive Necessary OTHER We used Stumptown's Arigato pak with interlocking enclosures. This type of packaging requires no adhesive to assemble. This is a very environmentally friendly type of CD packaging.

For the debut album of Birmingham, Alabama-based singer/songwriter Neil Couvillion, the design firm Combustion created a CD package that has a sophisticated folksy feel to it and didn’t break the bank, nor the environment. Designer and, unless there are many Couvillions out there and this is one bizarre coincidence, relative Ben Couvillion, explains:

We decided to use this type of packaging, first of all, because it was so unique. I had some samples that a friend of mine had given me from the printer — I immediately fell in love with its simplicity (and who doesn’t like a good solid piece of chipboard? Come on!). We thought it would really stand out among all the jewel cases and digi-paks out there. As an up-and-coming musician, Neil didn’t have a very large budget for album art and design, so by using Stumptown’s “Arigato pak!”, we got mucho bang for the buck. This type of package requires no adhesives to assemble, as it simply folds and locks together. We only used 2 colors on the whole piece, thus keeping cost down. I had to do A LOT of experimenting with overprinting in order to get the proper mix of color — in the end, the package looks as if there were more colors used than actually were. The printer later commented that this was one of the best multi-channel duo-tones they’d seen. Even they were impressed! The final packages shipped flat so they could be hand-folded as needed.

What I love most about this is, as Ben says, the illusion that this could be printed CMYK. The overprinting delivers great result and when mixed with the natural color of the chipboard create a kind of Mad Max-ian color palette that complements the photography really well.