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MediaPack Magazine
Early Spring 2009
A folk album's holiday packaging
Holiday Gifts From Loreena McKennitt
Joy Zaccaria discusses the ethereal package for the Canadian
singer’s album, A Midwinter Night’s Dream, and finds it
required earthbound co-ordination in a very limited timeframe.
For Canadian folk artist Loreena
McKennitt, winter is a time of
reflection. Having sold several million
albums worldwide in her career, her
new album, A Midwinter Night’s Dream, features
songs full of references to the natural world and
connections to spiritual and religious bearings. It
offers an array of the artist’s wide musical
influences, ranging from Celtic and classical to
Middle Eastern. “I really wanted to recapture
some of the frankincense and myrrh in this
music,” McKennitt says.
To reflect the varied cultural influences and
elements of the music, the album’s gift box also
had to capture the diverse richness of the season and McKennitt’s vision. She worked with
Ontario-based designer Dean de St Croix to
make a package that offered fans a whole tactile
experience to go along with the music.
“McKennitt had quite a lot of input,” says de St
Croix. “She was the main client contact when it
came to creative direction.”
The brief was for the physical and visual experience
to set the tone and be an appropriate introduction
to the musical experience that awaited
“We find that the best work comes out of
relationships with suppliers and clients
who contribute as unique individuals”
The gift box is the result of a very close
collaborative effort between McKennitt, the team
at creative communications agency de St Croix
and manufacturer Clear Sound & Vision (CSV)
based in London. CSV produced the limited
edition deluxe box set to accompany the
standard CD, which was to be sold on its own
and in time for the Christmas market – with just
three weeks lead-time.
Will Appleyard, sales and project manager at
CSV, explains: “The manufacturing brief had to
be deciphered into the industry jargon we speak
on this side of the Atlantic. We spent several
days sourcing materials based on samples
supplied by the Canadians. We matched them as
closely as possible.”
The box was designed to have a natural feel
and physical texture to it because of the nature of the image. “We wanted to have an uncoated,
textured stock that spoke to that history of the
music,” says de St Croix. “We chose white
because it was bright and worked well with the
concept of winter and snow.” Thinking of older
English rural themes, texturally and creatively,
the designers brought to the table the idea of
16th century rural paintings. The artist John
Nobrega was commissioned to create an
original painting for the piece that realised the
shared vision.
Embossed stars are on the cover, along with a
simple yet elegant wordmark in the centre of the
box. “Appleyard suggested white foil stamping
on the embossing to offer a contrast to the
natural textured surface and to allow the stars to
‘shine’,” says de St Croix. This was a critical
suggestion as it set off the presentation and led
to a number of other elements mimicking the
technique. Structurally, the box is intended to
remain with the recipient for a while and have
some other uses. That’s why the box itself, once
everything is removed, is quite subtle. “The lid is
designed as a separate piece that slides almost to
the bottom allowing a small portion to grasp –
no finger tabs are cut to keep the lines clean and
smooth,” says de St Croix.
Upon opening the box the fan finds a mantle
card or ‘concertina’ accordion card meant for
display. It contains the full bleed forest image
and messaging in a creative way that speaks to
the season and musical experience. “For this we
chose to keep the surface tight and smooth to
allow for a clean presentation of the image,” says
de St Croix. “On the reverse side, a full coverage
of a special red was chosen with a matt and spot
gloss varnish on lyrics and phrases to help add
depth and texture to the experience.”
In the interest of fan interaction, the box also
includes the holiday fun of put-it-together gifts.
One of the ornaments is the star that is
presented in white with embossing and white
foil stamping. The other is printed in process on
the textured uncoated stock as well. “These are
presented with a small red satin ribbon that the
fan is intended to assemble,” de St Croix adds.
“This serves two purposes: assembly efficiency
order to speed up the process, CSV used grain
emboss heavy board for the two hanging
decorations, as opposed to sourcing the textured
board originally requested.
The success of the final product was very
much a collaboration of the different parties
and elements that evolved as the project
came together. “We find that the best work
comes out of relationships with suppliers and
clients who contribute as unique
individuals,” says de St Croix. “CSV
contributed in a way that only a supplier
could with their knowledge and creativity,
while the courage of our client allowed for
some creative thinking from all parties.”
The deluxe gift box contains a DVD
documentary packed into a standard Digipak-style product and the CD album itself – also
packed into a Digipak-style product, for which
both English- and German-language booklets
were printed. This was a limited-edition box set,
produced alongside the commercial release of
the album, for which CSV manufactured a
greater quantity.
There are three package options. Package 1 is
just the album in a plain Digipak that is cello-wrapped. Package 2 for some territories was the album and the DVD wrapped in a dye cut O-card and in the same paper as the box. It was
printed full over red flood on the inside and dye
cut so you can see the image of the animals
through it. Package 3 is the big gift box with the
DVD, CD, postcards and gifts. “We wanted to
satisfy all the markets worldwide,” says de St
Croix. “In the music industry, different
territories know what their market will bear, so
they determine what’s going to be sold in them.
Some markets wanted all three. The majority of
markets wanted the big gift box.”
A challenge in working on a worldwide scale is the number of suppliers producing a variety of product sizes with slight variations. “At times there were three or four different suppliers, including some print suppliers, working on the project,” de St Croix adds. Different manufacturers were running concurrently with different formats of artwork, but CSV is the only manufacturer that did every element and made all the postcards and the ornaments for everyone. “It was very interesting logistically from a production standpoint. We had, at times, six different versions of artwork: German, French, bilingual, American, Canadian, and UK versions.”
www.clearsoundandvision.com
www.destcroix.net