Wednesday 17 October 2007

FAO Paul Wilson...Design that Inspires

Choosing two pieces of design that I really like is hard, but I found this one recently whilst browsing a packaging book. It's a CD cover design for an independant record label, showcasing the best of British. Instead of merely covering it with funky photoshopped graphics, the designers Stylo Studio went for a meat-packaging spoof, replacing the words "British Beef" with "British Beat".



The promotional CD came in the above package, a proper meat tray with the correct labelling. An image of beef was used on the actual CD. The general release product came in the following package:



This design is obviously much more conventional, but I still like the way they've followed the theme through, by maintaining the same print out on the CD and using the meat label as the front cover.

I guess I like it because it's a very simple idea, executed in a very concise way. Nothing is over the top, and everything comes together to make a piece of work that is clever, and fairly humourous too.

The other piece of work that I really like is the following:

http://davetherave87.blogspot.com/2007/09/beetles.html

The simplest and cleverest work is what appeals to me the most, in all of design. There's not much to think about, it's just pure concept executed perfectly.

1 comment:

pwilson said...

i think you're maybe doing the work down a little when you say there's nothing to think about. isn't this all about the relationship between word and image and playing on our expectations of graphic genres. food packaging of this type is fairly instantly recognisable: it's playing on what we're used to seeing and making use of that.

in both cases there's an image or genre in visual culture that the viewer has a memory and / or understanding of. the designers use that and in their own different ways, twist it.

how might this idea and theme inspire your independent project?