Designer Jewel Cases Make CDs Valuable

designer jewel cases

Make CD Jewel Cases into beautiful, appealing, valuable works of art, with “DESIGNER JEWEL CASES.”

Jewel Cases for CDs are mis-named.

In reality, they are just dull squares of plastic with a hinge.

There is not much variety in CD Jewel Cases.

You can get them thick or thin, and in different colors. That’s about it.

Here are the reasons for making CD Jewel Cases into works of art:

1. CD JEWEL CASES ARE NOT ATTRACTIVE.

Consumers hide them away in boxes or just get rid of them and keep their CDs in racks.

2. SELLING A PHYSICAL THING IS A MORE RELIABLE WAY OF TURNING A PROFIT THAN SELLING ELECTRONIC FILES ON A COMPUTER.

Artists who make recordings, recording companies, publishers, and retailers and manufacturers of CDs have lost sales and profits to MP3s, the internet, and piracy. They would all welcome a way to increase CD sales. If a CD and its case were worth something in and of themselves, sales would be increased and A WHOLE NEW MARKET WOULD BE CREATED.

3. MAKING A JEWEL CASE A WORK OF ART
MAKES THE THING ITSELF—
NOT JUST THE INFORMATION IT CONTAINS—VALUABLE AND APPEALING.

For instance, there is a substantial market in handmade books, first editions, signed editions, etc. (cf., Digital Be Damned: Publication Studio Sells 10,000 Handmade Books – Publishing Perspectives) These books are valuable as much for the quality of their manufacture, and their rareness, as they are for the writing they contain.

4. JEWEL CASEs CAN BE MADE INTO
A WORK OF ART
AT A LOW COST.

Creating unique plastic molds (and perhaps paying the artist who creates them) is the only added cost–that is, if the Designer Jewel Case you design is still plastic. (Creating specialized jewel case molds should become ever easier with the advent of 3D Printing.)

I suggest that recording artists and CD wholesalers and retailers HIRE GREAT ARTISTS to create artistic designs for CD Jewel Cases.

Great artists design houseware, appliances, furnishings, clothing, jewelry, etc., creating added value for these products. Great artists could likewise create added value for CD Jewel Cases.

Here are just some of the ideas I have for making CD Jewel Cases beautiful, attractive–and therefore valuable–works of art.

CD Jewel Case PLASTIC CAN BE EASILY MOLDED into intricate, colorful, and varied designs, (see illustration), such as:

1. KALEIDOSCOPES
2. MANDALAS
3. FILIGREE SCREENS
4. IRISH KNOTS

5. VISUAL EFFECTS OF MOLDED PLASTIC

There are also a number of INTERESTING AND UNUSUAL VISUAL EFFECTS MOLDED PLASTIC CAN CREATE (See illustration):

1. MOTION CARDS (LENTICULAR PRINTING)

Everyone has seen plastic “Motion Cards” that change or move depending on the angle the image is viewed. For instance, a box of Cracker Jacks used to often contain a “Magic Motion Fun Card.” Lenticular printing is becoming more and more sophisticated, and many interesting effects can be created inexpensively in plastic using it.

2. HOLOGRAM

A 2D Hologram (or a “Pepper’s Ghost” imitation hologram, which simulates 3D) could be easily imprinted in the jewel case. In fact, I envisage a hologram imprinted into the top of the CD itself, where the circular motion of the CD creates a moving holographic image above it.

2. FRESNEL LENS (FUNHOUSE MIRROR)

A “Fresnel Lens” is a very thin, light magnifying lens with a circular design that can be easily made of plastic. It can have a visual warping effect similar to Funhouse Mirrors.

4. ETCH-A-SKETCH

A reciprocal agreement could be made with the Ohio Art Company to imbed an Etch-A-Sketch into a CD Jewel Case.

5. RUBIK’S CUBE

A Rubik’s Cube could surround the CD Jewel Case. (Except that, technically speaking, a Jewel Case is not a cube, but a rectangular prism). The hinges and clasps that hold a jewel-case together could be replaced with magnets, so that the elements of the device could turn.

Also, CD Jewel Cases could be made out of OTHER MATERIALS THAN PLASTIC (see illustration), materials that are more attractive, more natural–and more valuable.

1. PRESSED TIN

Pressed tin is already used for cases to hold CD and DVD collections. Making individual CDs of pressed tin, with intricate designs like the designs on pressed-tin ceilings, requires no additional steps.

2. CARVED WOOD

CD Jewel Cases of carved wood might be so beautiful that they would be displayed on consumer’s shelves and mantelpieces.

CUSTOMERS

Who would buy designer jewel-cases?

1. Consumers who buy attractive, well-made, appealing-to-look-at objects.
2. Recording companies, publishers, wholesalers, and retailers of CDs who want to protect their profits.
3. Musicians and artists who believe that disseminating their work in CD form will protect their royalties.

Custom-making jewel-cases and CDs makes the actual, physical CD in its case as valuable as the information stored on it.

It is a double appeal – the CD and its case, and the recording it contains.

Also, making CD Jewel Cases into works of art creates a whole secondary market in CD JEWEL CASE COLLECTIBLES.

Rainbow Fractals: Art Made from Art

Click on the link “Graphic Art” in the right sidebar to view my Rainbow Fractals and other art of mine on Etsy.

Rainbow Fractal I Psychedelic Kaleidoscopic Digital Outsider – Etsy

rainbow fractals

My Rainbow Fractals are not fractals. They are simply miniaturizations and repetitions of segments of Rainbow Belt. But the principle of scale is still at work across the different versions. With each further miniaturization, the image changes significantly. I think of these as potential desktop wallpaper for those who take a little vertigo with their e-mail.

Minoan Designs

Click on the link “Graphic Art” in the right sidebar to view all my art on Etsy.

Minoan Design I: Psychedelic Kaleidoscopic Colorful Decorative – Etsy

minoanMy Minoan Designs are a mixture of original images in what I hope is a Minoan style and stolen images. The Minoans from whom I stole the stolen images, however, I think are past caring. Minoan frescoes and pottery are treasure troves of design. We have so many evocative, expressive images from their culture and nothing else to go on. It is like watching an exciting silent movie with a complicated plot, big chunks missing, and no subtitles.

Thunderbird Wings

Thunderbird Wings Print Digital Art Print – Etsy

Another very minimal work, a study in triangles, my Thunderbird Wings compositions use standard Paint shapes, but, as with my lozenge compositions, I just eyeball them, I don’t measure them or regularize them. The result: imperfections. Japanese chawan, or teacup, craftspeople, I understand, make sure every cup they make has a flaw. So do I. Sometimes not on purpose. I just called them Thunderbird Wings because the triangular effect reminded me of them. Thunderbirds strike some subconscious chord in me. I hope to make some more, maybe some closer to the American Indian-style image.

Thunderbird (mythology) – Wikipedia

 

Rainbow Belt: Native American + Rubin’s Vase

Rainbow Belt II: Psychedelic Kaleidoscopic Digital Art – Etsy

I got the idea for Rainbow Belt from a photo in a great book about handicrafts in colonial New England, The Age of Homespun, by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. The photo depicted a strap of Native American design, woven in 18th-century New Hampshire of linen and dyed porcupine quills by Rachel Meloon, a European-American woman who had grown up among the Abenaki, for her neighbor, Peter Kimball, who carried it, I understand, throughout the Revolutionary War. For Rainbow Belt, I re-produced designs from Rachel Meloon’s strap, but I skipped some, made some up, and colored them differently.

I have always liked pure, traditional designs, carved latticework screens of provenance Islamic

rainbow belt
Islamic Screen

and Indian,

rainbow belt
Indian Jali Screen

Minoan pottery and fresco,

rainbow beltrainbow belt

Neolithic cave painting,

rainbow belt
Neolithic Cave Painting

Anasazi pottery,

rainbow belt
Anasazi Pot

American Indian design of whatever provenance.

rainbow belt
19th-Century Sioux Buffalo Hide Painting

Most such art is non-representational, or, as with a Mimbres hummingbird

rainbow belt
Mimbres Hummingbird

or a Levantine rock-art spear-man,

rainbow belt
Levantine Rock Art

abstracted.

I do not remember the original inspiration for separating the bands of images from Rachel Meloon’s strap with bands of color-spectrum-sequenced Rubin’s vases.

rainbow belt
Rubin Vase

I suppose it had something to do with the cross-cultural nature of the artefact symbolizing the unity of mankind. Or maybe I made that up after the fact. No tracing was involved. I drew the strap designs by hand, one by one, on an 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper, using mechanical pencil, ruler, protractor, square, compass, and Michaelangelo-style pounce stencils. The ranks of Rubin’s vase-faces were all drawn free-hand, which is why none of the faces really match, what I like to think of as a my low-rent variation on Shi Huang Ti’s Terracotta Army.

rainbow belt
Soldiers of Shi Huang Ti’s Terracotta Army