By Mike Goldstein, Album Cover Hall of Fame.com
Posted May 28, 2021 – It’s called “Album Cover Art”, so what I take from that name is that it is something created by artists (artisans?) who create the products we see by hand, using their innate talents and abilities to deliver something unique and appealing (and, in the case of product packaging, something that sells and makes the people that buy these products happy with their purchases). In the case of box sets and limited-edition “special” packages, it’s all the more important that the artists/artisans working on those products “get it right”, as the products are typically more expensive, as collectibles are expected to be, so the value proposition (OMG – I’m back in Marketing!) has to appeal to fans who are being asked to spend (often, many) hundreds of dollars on a product that there may only be a few hundred copies made. Additionally, the designers of these products have to be sure that their client(s) is/are ultimately happy, since the packages are typically the latest/best expressions of their music or, even more often lately, career retrospectives that are attempting to put the totality of the featured musical acts’ musical and lyrical (and, in most cases, visual) output out in a comprehensive package. To do that well, there must be an effective collaboration between the design teams and their clients, with the best examples of those successful collaborations garnering positive critical/fan reviews and, in special cases, special recognition from their industry peers, such as the Grammy Awards that were handed out earlier this year to musician Jeff Tweedy and designer/art director Lawrence Azerrad for Wilco’s Ode To Joy limited-edition set that they produced and released in late 2019 on the dBpm label.
Both are no strangers to critical acclaim, with Tweedy and his bandmates having built a strong relationship with both his fans and the music press over the past 25+ years (and even some years before that while in Uncle Tupelo) – having been previously nominated for Grammy Awards in various categories eight times and winning twice in the “Best Alternative Music” category, once in 2005 for A Ghost Is Born and again in 2016 for Star Wars – while Lawrence’s talents (as principal of the LADesign studio) have also been recognized with two Grammy Awards in the “Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package” category, with a win previously in 2017 for the impressive package that was put together for The Voyager Golden Record: 40th Anniversary Edition. Even with histories of success like the ones I’ve just detailed, artists such as Jeff T. and Lawrence A. approach each project as blank canvasses, knowing that fans don’t want – or expect – to see a repeat performance from the duo, so I knew that I’d need to ask Lawrence how the award-winning package grew from the seed of an idea that Jeff brought to the table into the hand-made wonder of a package that was ultimately offered to the buying public.
Having watched the video that Lawrence linked me to that showed certain aspects of the product’s manufacturing (you’ll find this link at the end of the article), it reminded me that, in the case of a truly-inspired package (or many impressive works of art, if you think about it), the best designers/producers/manufacturers don’t look for the cheapest and easiest way to create such a work. Sometimes, the only way something can meet an artist’s highest expectations is when it is designed in exquisite detail and then hand-made/assembled, which was certainly the case here. Of course, computers and machines can aid in important aspects of the creative and manufacturing processes, but when something is proposed that is best brought to fruition by the hands of artisans, it’s nice when an artist/producer tells the team “just get it done and get it done right”. If that decision then has costs that might make the product more expensive and, perhaps, out of reach for some consumers, its up to the artist to decide how best to proceed in the promotion and sale of these items.
Collectors are faced with this dilemma quite often and, sometimes, an artist will try and accommodate by offering a lower-priced (and, inevitably, scaled-down) option. You see this all of the time in the world of special-edition music packaging, with great recent examples of this being the releases of 50th anniversary album packages by The Beatles, the Rolling Stones and others where consumers can opt for anything from a single remastered CD or LP to “Deluxe” two-CD/LP packages with photo books and “Collector’s Edition” boxes packed with multiple custom-colored CDs/LPs, USB drives, 200-page illustrated tomes, photos, art prints and various bits of memorabilia. Record Store Day offerings are another way for many musical acts to mine their deep catalogs to bring fans something special and, as I’ve been involved in the review and judging of many of these products, while I’m regularly impressed with what’s being offering in that space, I am also detecting a bit of standardization, which is never the way an artist wants his/her/their work to be seen and classified.
Projects like the Ode To Joy limited-edition art book and vinyl record package (in an edition of 1000 band-autographed copies, priced at $375 – see link at the end of this article) that’s the subject of today’s article are a bit more rare, bringing those of us who’ve been around a while back to the 1960s – 1970s, when record labels had to rely on their art directors to come up with packages that would both represent their acts’ public personas and impress retailers enough to have them give these products special consideration when being put on a wall or end-cap or “Best New Records” display (versus just being stuck in a bin, to be thumbed over later). As you’ll read in the following interview, both the approach to conceptualizing and producing Wilco’s 11th studio album and the trust each party showed in their collaborators’ abilities to perform at the highest levels was exactly what was needed in order to produce a package that can’t help but impress anyone who takes the time to turn the pages and appreciate what’s been done here. Now, if you’ll follow me, I’ll take you into “the making of” this very special, special-edition product:
Interview with LADesign principal Lawrence Azerrad (done by Mike Goldstein via email and phone in April, 2021) –
Mike Goldstein (after spending a couple of minutes catching up on life in general and, in particular, our lives during COVID, we began the interview) – Lawrence, it was very cool to see your name on the winner’s list again – congratulations to your and your chum Jeff for winning the Grammy. You know that I try and interview the Grammy winners each year – and, this year, YOU’RE IT – can we begin with you letting me know how you were first introduced to your client?
Lawrence Azerrad – Yes…this is my sixth album with Wilco and, including other projects for Tweedy and others in Wilco, this is probably my eighth full-length album with the Tweedy Enterprise. I did one with Spencer and Jeff for the band Tweedy and a solo record and a couple of albums with other members of Wilco, but this is my sixth studio album for Wilco. I had done Summer Teeth – it was my first – when I was a young kid working at Reprise and Warner Records and, actually, we just worked on the re-release of Summer Teeth, too, so that might take it up to nine projects. Summer Teeth, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Sky Blue Sky, The Album and Whole Love and Ode To Joy and then the Summer Teeth box set. It’s been a long history with Jeff and Wilco and dBpm and that’s when I was just working at the label. Some of it was luck some of it was timing and someone at the label said “there’s this band called Wilco and we’d like you to take a shot at doing some stuff with them”. They were actually in the middle of the Being There album cycle when I started working on some ads and singles and the like for them.
Mike G – Obviously, one of my favorite covers is the one for Yankee Hotel Foxtrot because, being born and raised in the Chicago area and then moving back here a few years ago, I’d always wanted to live in Marina City – and did get to visit a few times – and bowled in the 2nd floor alley once, too… beyond that, it’s such an icon and the fact that you guys chose to use that photo for what’s turned out to be an iconic cover is very cool.
So, the second question is – which you’ve already answered part of – since you worked on a number of albums with them, you already have a good sense of their recording process, but was there something about the music for this particular album that helped trigger your creative juices?
Lawrence A – Well, that’s a good question. My relationship and history with Jeff and Wilco are informed by the understanding that there’s a depth to the “enigmatic-ness” of Jeff and his team. The most consistent thing about Wilco is their capacity to explore and push themselves and stretch boundaries lyrically and musically and sonically, and I think that that’s why their albums are unique to each other from record to record. Knowing that there’s this kind of if intellectual and artistic and creative depth to them that carries over into the artwork, there’s really no set formula or standard to approaching the art here each time. There is this excavation of possibilities and you just have to be open to where that process might lead. It’s hard to put it into words other than I know that when I start a Wilco project, I don’t know how it’s going to end. It’s that willingness to trust and just to be open and take those risks and be patient with the evolution of it – that’s going to be “how the cookie crumbles”. Anyone who is hard-pressed for a time-based solution or a visual trick is going to be in for some disappointment, because you just have to try and try again hard and be open and trusting. It’s very much a dialogue with Jeff, although, it’s kind of an abstract dialogue. He’s not saying “I see a tree or a hill” or anything like that…
MG – So he’s not coming to the table like Paul McCartney did with Sgt. Pepper’s, arriving with a booklet full of sketches he’s already done and says “here, riff on that” …
LA – No, not at all. But, he definitely knows…he has a way of extracting the best out of me as a designer and out of the other people that he works with. There’s a wide openness but, at the same time, it’s not up to you to do whatever you want. He doesn’t lead you in a direction, but its not a free-for-all and there’s definitely a conversation where… to put it into more basic terms, for the sake of an article, there’s a process of trying and swinging a bat with me knowing that I’m going to strike out for a couple of innings before we’re into a zone. And I think that it takes – to continue the metaphor – that game of catch until Jeff can begin to visualize that this idea might be appropriate. When I come with more-specific ideas, he’ll respond with “no, that’s not it’, but we help each other gravitate towards the right zone. As we’ve gotten more…
MG – So, with you having worked with him so many times, you don’t have to sit there trembling “well, he’s going to fire me if I show him something he doesn’t like” – you guys can parry and thrust until you get to the point where you’re headed in the right direction together.
LA – Yeah, but, to be clear, even though we have a long history together, it’s not like I’m in the band or anything like that so, there’s a trust, but at the same time, there’s an eagerness… I want to nail it but you can’t be too eager. You have to be open to the way the vine grows and so, once we start to get to the right ballpark – and I’m not really that big of a sports guy (laughs) – that’s when it gets a little bit easier, and Jeff can start to say things with fewer words. I’m not comfortable speaking for Jeff, but he has said before that he’s really not that much of a visual person himself and sometimes claims that he struggles with the words and that he’s not seeing something – it’s more of a feeling and when he starts to use certain adjectives to describe that feeling, that’s when I can start to say “OK, I think I got you” and then I can go off in my corner and do what I need to start getting us to where we’re going.
In the case of Ode To Joy, it took a while – from the start, there was always going to be a pop-up book, but it took a long while to coalesce around the idea of “openness” and “nothingness” and that sort of abstractness and, to me, that’s what makes the work so enigmatic, because there’s art with almost nothing, but that’s not how we started the conversation.
MG – So, with that answer, you’ve pretty well covered the next question…As you’ve described it, their approach to how they make records is fairly unique – at least a bit different to those whose music might be classified as “similar” to some degree…dBpm is his own label, right?
LA – Yes, I think that the “P” is small – it stands for “decibels per minute”.
MG – Got it, thanks. Are Wilco and related acts the only acts that you find on that label?
LA – It’s ostensibly their own label – I can’t really speak to that, Mike…It’s becoming more common for bands and management agencies to strike out on their own with their own imprints and not just because they can. You now have this proliferation of “label services” – marketing and manufacturing and production – I think that having a smaller organization that’s more closely aligned with your own DNA allows you to have greater control artistically over how your art is shared with the public.
MG – Ever since things began to migrate from analog to digital and bands have started to understand what they can do…with so many bands consisting of very creative people who are artistic in so many ways – both with music and visuals – it’s good that they can have a platform that they can express themselves through. It’s also great that they can have the help of someone like you to guide them through the parts of the process where their strengths don’t lie.
LA – Yes, you see it in instances like something from Third Man Records, where it’s not the “look and feel” of the packaging or the sound of the music – theirs is a wholesale approach to their DNA and how that is done. Every component is immersed – there are a myriad of other examples that are like that. Wilco has been largely operated as a “family enterprise” for a long time and you see that with the Solid Sound music and art festival that they’ve produced for years (Editor’s note – here’s a link to the last one they did before live music fests shut down in 2020 – https://solidsoundfestival.com/lineup/) – something like that is part of their spirit.
MG – Very good. So, I think that our discussion has been morphing nicely from question to question…In terms of their day-to-day involvement in your work and your process, how involved are they? Can you describe this as a percentage, or when in the project they’ll check in with you, or anything else along those lines? Do you feel that you get the resources – money, time, etc. – to do the job that you know that they want you to do for them?
LA – Let me answer the second part first. On a project like Ode To Joy, for example…When you work with Wilco, you’re part of a larger “project of art” that is authentic and has a resonance amongst the fans and the public and their culture – you’re kind of along for the ride, to be part of something that’s larger than you. As a designer…for me, that’s the core of why I became a designer and why I enjoy making album artwork. There’s really no way to quantify – financially – how that balances out. There are benefits beyond money that are yielded when you’re part of a project like this – that’s part of the gift of working on something like that. Some designers have a matrix: there are three “Fs” – Fame, Fortune and Fun – and this one wasn’t fun, although you enjoy the ends from working hard. You certainly don’t earn a fortune – for me, it’s not about the money – and I don’t do it for fame, although I feel that I’m part of something larger. That being said, the Ode To Joy box set that we won the Grammy for was incredibly expensive to make and manufacture. When the cost estimates to make it came in, Jeff insisted that he didn’t want to change a thing and having a client who will personally back an endeavor like that is worth a lot so, again, it’s not so much about what I might make – I’m not doing this to get rich, but I do appreciate the privilege of being part of something important culturally and musically.
MG – Let me ask you then, on a related note – Earlier in my career, I worked for a company that was bought by an industry titan and couldn’t help but notice that the new owner’s approach to working with others was “now that you have the chance to be associated with the (REDACTED) name, you should be less concerned about how hard we work you and your crews and when or whether we pay you to deliver what we want on time and on the ridiculous budget we’ve given you…” You’re not describing a situation like that, right?
LA – Right. You raise a good point, though. Unfortunately, the music industry has been host to that tactic that you’ve articulated too often and too regularly. “Oh, this project is going to be good for you” or “this project will make you famous” or “this is just so important and special” and, usually, those residual accolades and benefits don’t transfer to the larger team that’s behind the work. Wilco is an exception to that in that the art that they make is more than about making a hit or being famous or being something that’s pretentious. It’s about making something from the heart and that’s why I think they’re so beloved by their fans.
MG – So, were they happy? Besides the fact that you won a Grammy for the package, were they happy with the way the package turned out, and how did you know that they were happy?
LA – Well, in the end they were really happy with the package, because I think that it’s something beautiful and unique and enigmatic. I think that they would have been happier if more people had bought the deluxe box set – it’s an expensive package, of course – but that’s in the “it would have been nice” column. It’s a risk you run, though, with these deluxe sets and, as you’ve noted on the Album Cover Hall of Fame, there’s a trend in box sets where it’s a suitcase filled with paraphernalia and this and that and, to do something different, visually – boldly different and unique and special – I’m honestly grateful that it was recognized as such, because it is so different. There are no photos of the band in the package anywhere and there’s almost nothing on the cover of the package – it’s different, and it’s heartening…I feel that what we were able to create was a work of art and think that that’s appropriate for a band like Wilco. Their music isn’t made for algorithms – it’s made for art.
MG – No “non-fungible tokens” in this package…
LA – Yes. Would everyone be happy if it also was an epic commercial success? Of course, no one would be upset with that.
MG – But they were happy with what you produced for them – what you collaborated with them on – as a finished product.
LA – Yes.
MG – So, who else worked with you on the design-slash-production side of things? Are there folks you’d care to name?
LA – There was the printer – LCP (Editor’s Note – AKA “Brand Meets World”) – they worked a lot on the engineering of the components and printing and manufacturing of the book.
MG – Anyone at LCP you’d care to call out?
LA – There were so many players involved in the matrix of the project that I don’t want to call out anyone specific…Everyone from the pressman to the pre-press people – it was one of those situations in the manufacturing of something like this that every single link in the chain had to be perfect. These packages were assembled by hand and the people who crafted those one-by-one, piece by piece…I don’t know whether you saw the little video I made that shows how a lot of the components move?
MG – No, the only video I saw was of your acceptance speech…
LA – I put together a Vimeo video of the printing and more.
MG – Is it like the “unboxing videos” you see sometimes?
LA – Not so much – it’s a little more dynamic than an unboxing video.
MG – That’d be perfect – I’ll add the link at the end of this article. Now, flipping the page – it sounds like, in a project that’s as artistic and hand-made as this one, I’m assuming that there would have been a lot of “unique” approaches to doing things. Were there special materials or machinery used – any pre-production tools that you might have used to create the finished product?
LA – Yeah. The printer had mixed a custom-color paint – specific for and unique only to this project – and they had to fabricate a bronze die for the deboss on the box and the book cover and the LP covers. The entire book is printed on Mohawk paper, which is milled here in the US, and the book was printed and assembled here in the US. The project also won “Best in Show” for the Mohawk Award, which is the paper company’s annual design competition. I had these ideas of how a pop-up book would come together – what the sum of all the parts would be – but it was a lot of work, in terms of engineering – how these templates could be made and then reverse-engineered for everything to come together in a way that it could be built and manufactured.
MG – Did you come to the table – did you sit down with LCP and say “here’s what I’d like to do”, with them saying “that’s great, Lawrence, but that’s impossible” or “here’s what we can offer as an alternative approach”?
LA – It was done more in broader strokes – I had a look and a feel and an outline, so I’d say that it’d be fairer to say that they knew it must happen and figured out how to make it happen.
MG – Very impressive. You must feel good when you’re working with people like that.
LA – Yes, it was a special moment.
MG – And so, from beginning to end, how long did the whole project take?
LA – I’d like to say it took eight or nine months.
MG – Can you break that down for me – how much time was “concept”, how much was pre-production and how long was production?
LA – You know, it’s kind of hard to say as it was such a crazy year and I was travelling so much. It’d be interesting to look at the calendar and work it out. It took a long time – 3-4 months or so – just doing sketches on general ideas for visual directions, even though before we got started, the first thing that Jeff said was that he wanted to do a pop-up book, so that was part of the very genesis of it. Then, there was a point in the process where, once the design was 80% in shape, that I flew out to Chicago and went to their loft to tie things up – design-wise – in person. Then, from there, it was probably another 3-4 months of engineering and print production, followed by at least two months of editorial review and mechanical preparation. By that point, it was working on Solid Sounds and then printing and manufacturing…it might have even been a year…it could have been a year.
MG – So, it came out in October of 2019, so you began the work sometime in late 2018?
LA – Yeah, that pretty much jives..
MG – OK, so the last thing – since I’m asking you to reach back a little bit – not quite to the 1960s, which is always fun when I’m interviewing people who worked for Hendrix and the like – was there anything that you’d care to share, or feel comfortable sharing, that was something fun, something anecdotal that you think my readers might get a kick out of knowing.
LA – As far as personal treats – the day that I was designing in the Wilco loft, they were mastering one particular song – it was the song “Hold Me Anyway” – while I was working there and the song coming over the speakers was very loud as I was sitting there, designing for that record and that song in their space, which is kind of sacred ground…It was a special moment just to think that it was so nice to be in this arena and in this moment and this place and this time hearing this music and designing the art for it..
MG – That’s perfect, and much better than “so-and-so walked in the room drunk and swiped the art out of my hands and knocked me over and said that the whole thing was shit”…
LA – No, no…there’s a real generosity and magnanimousness with Wilco and they appreciate what I bring, and I appreciate the chance to step into that place and that was really fulfilling. I’ll also say that the last song on the record – I don’t know how much of the package you’ve seen, but in the deluxe box set the type is not set in the traditional stanza/paragraph form but rather scattered to the cadence of the song. It is done so on the album inserts, and since Jeff takes his art so seriously – he’s pretty conservative about liberties with laying out the lyrics – you really don’t want to mess around with those too much. But, in this instance, we were able to get really artistic with the type, which made it a lot harder to proof-read and correct to make sure everything was right. There’s a lyric in the last song – in the middle of the song – where she sings “what else could go wrong” and I had intentionally put that phrase upside-down, just as a little inside joke.
On a project like this, if anything else did go wrong, I’ll just leave them unmentioned. By the end, that joke wasn’t all that funny.
MG – Well, I thought that was cute, and now that is one of those things that fans will now go and find for themselves. If they hadn’t seen that before, they’ll certainly go look for it now…So, are you getting a Grammy Award statue and, if so, do you have a place scoped out where you’re going to put it, or will you just throw it in with all the others?
LA – Yes, I am getting a statuette. I just signed the papers for it this week. As you know, we have another one for the Voyager Golden Record, so my wife wants me to use them as bookends…I know that it’s cool to pretend that I don’t care and say that I’m going to use it as a doorstop or as a cigarette holder, but it’s a nice honor and I’ll keep it in my office. I’m grateful for them – I don’t deify it or have a spotlight on it or anything like that – but it’s not going to be in a box in a drawer.
MG – So we won’t be seeing it on eBay or at an entertainment auction with an opening bid of $100…
LA – No and, you know, you’re actually not allowed to do anything like that. They say that it is “the property of the Grammy’s”…let me look underneath my other one…(reading) “No unauthorized transfer of this statuette is illegal”…
MG – I think that, perhaps after you’re dead…every once in a while, one will pop up in some weird auction, I think…I’ve been prepping a lot of things from my old art gallery and my time in the music business for an auction later this year and I had to go through to make sure I wasn’t giving away much that was personalized to me. You’ll often see things in an auction that were personalized to the owner and you have to wonder why it would mean anything to anyone else.
Well, my friend, thanks so much for your time and keep up the great work.
LA – Thanks, Mike, I really appreciate it.
¸ To watch the aforementioned video of printing/assembly of Ode To Joy package, click on over to the Vimeo site at – https://vimeo.com/358889335
About today’s interviewee, Lawrence Azerrad –
(b. 1973 in Los Angeles, CA, USA) After watching a presentation by David Carson, former art director of the influential music/lifestyle magazine Ray Gun, Lawrence Azerrad decided to change his major at the California College of the Arts from illustration to graphic design and work towards becoming a designer working within the music business. Listening to Carson speak, Lawrence realized that album cover design would allow him the opportunity to appeal to peoples’ deepest emotions and create long-lasting memories for them through his work.
After graduating with a BFA in Graphic Design in 1995, he’d soon get the opportunity to create that link between fan and musician when he accepted a position as an art director at Warner Bros/Reprise Records, taking on assignments for artists including Elvis Costello, Miles Davis, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rod Stewart and a new band from Chicago named Wilco, doing the cover for the group’s initial release on the WB label in 1999 titled Summerteeth (and, since then, nearly all of their critically-acclaimed releases). In 2001, he left to open his own design firm – LAD Design – in Los Angeles, adding new clients looking to take advantage of his skills in the design, film and digital media areas in both in the music industry (Foo Fighters, Johnny Lang, Billy Talent, Jay-Z, others) and in other areas of commercial design such as The Clinton Foundation, the Heal The Bay environmental group, surfer Laird Hamilton, Red Bull, the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel and the UCLA Live theater center, among many others.
In addition to the two Grammy-winning packages he’s designed (Wilco’s Ode To Joy and The Voyager Golden Record – see below),
a selection of Lawrence’s most-notable album package credits includes – notable album cover credits include – Rod Stewart – When We Were The New Boys; Wilco – Summerteeth, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Sky Blue Sky, Wilco (The Album) and The Whole Love; Red Hot Chili Peppers – Californication; Various Artists – Ocean’s Eleven Soundtrack; k.d.lang – Live By Request; Story of the Year – Page Avenue; Jay-Z/Linkin Park – Collision Course; The Wallflowers – Rebel, Sweetheart; Foo Fighters – Skin & Bones; Herbie Hancock – The Imagine Project; The Beach Boys – That’s Why God Made The Radio and Benmont Tench – You Should Be So Lucky.
So that he can share his passion for design with those looking at developing their talents in the area, Lawrence also find time to work as an instructor at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and the UCLA Extension school. He has also taught at The Academy of Art University Graduate School of Graphic Design in San Francisco and has served on the Graphic Design Thesis review committee at CCA. Most-recently, Lawrence was able to put together an exhibition that nicely manifests one of his ongoing educational goals – that being able to illustrate the close relationship between music and design. To do that, the Grammy-winning designer – along with a a team of international talent and the staff of the Museum of Design in Atlanta, GA – has created a blockbuster of an online exhibition that’s sure to please music/art fans with its depth and quality of content. As you’ll read in this nice intro article on the Its’ Nice That site – https://www.itsnicethat.com/news/lawrence-azerrad-the-future-happened-designing-the-future-of-music-exhibition-120421 – “Designing the Future of Music has been something of a passion project. Around seven years ago, he noticed “a substantial transformation in the role that album artwork played in our lives,” he says, in how “folks were connecting to, valuing and utilizing music”. Therefore he set out to “uncover new ways to celebrate and elevate the full spectrum of the music experience and the role that design can play in this… The show is packed with fascinating work and stories, offering plenty for even the most knowledgeable design and music aficionados to discover.”
Here’s a link to exhibition site – https://thefuturehappened.org/, which also includes info about the upcoming and past special events built in support of this exhibition.
More information on this artist can be found at his web site – http://laddesign.net/
Technical details about Wilco’s Ode To Joy special-edition package –
In addition to the Ode To Joy LP, which is pressed on 180 gram vinyl and features a LP jacket and inserts that are exclusive to this edition, the limited-edition package includes a 22-page clothbound hardcover embossed book printed on 100 point Mohawk archival paper. The book features collages and unique hand assembled paper constructions that animate and reveal album lyrics including pages engineered with pull out die cut pockets, spinning wheels, paper doors, and unfolding gatefold spreads.
As previously-mentioned, this package won the “Best In Show” award from one of the world’s most-respected paper packaging manufacturers – Mohawk Products – https://www.mohawkconnects.com/mohawk-show-winners/wilco-ode-joy (nicely illustrated)
The package was printed/assembled by LCP Brand Meets World – https://brandmeetsworld.com/
You can buy your own limited-edition copy of the Ode To Joy special edition package on the band’s web site at https://wilcostore.com/collections/vinyl/products/ode-to-joy-deluxe-vinyl-lp?variant=30347705909283
Unless otherwise noted, all text and images included in this article are Copyright 2021 Mike Goldstein and AlbumCoverHallofFame.com – All Rights Reserved. All of the trade names mentioned in these summaries are the properties of their respective owners and are used solely for reference to illustrate this article.
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