#One more light album cover meaning plus

In a time where clean, minimalist design dominates, it's obvious that Dorado's herd of Heidelberg printing presses were built in a very different era.

We walk to the back of the shop, where the actual printing takes place. Freund pointed to the cover, 'it looks so clean and simple, doesn't it? These are very complicated and difficult things to do.' (As it is, Dorado and Highlighter won a 2012 'Best of Special Innovation Printing Award' from the Printing Industries Association of Southern California.)

#One more light album cover meaning plus

That has to be laser cut.' That meant Dorado had to send out the obis to another factory to be laser-cut, then bring them back to finish the manufacturing process in-house (which included the notch-cuts in the back, plus a difficult, double-foil stamp process that Dorado hadn't attempted before). The interior of the gatefold (double) cover also required an entirely different kind of paper which, in turn, required another custom ink to print with.Д®ven Dorado has its limits the obi features cut-out stencil lettering for the album title but as Freund explained, 'you can't punch out those little letters and have them hold. The exterior jacket material, which looks and feels like cardboard, is actually a tip-on 'the material was different than paper we ever tried to wrap on anything before,' said Freund. Highlighter also required special fluorescent ink to be mixed, just for the cover lettering. 'Who would care, right?' Portugal asked rhetorically, and then answered, 'it's these little things, like the fact that you can actually take it apart and put it back together, that are huge design. die-cut) small notches on each side of the band, that intersected like a belt. The challenge is that Portugal didn't want it glued since that meant, once broken, the obi wouldn't be resealable. For example, Highlighter is ringed with a band of paper, known as an obi after the Japanese term for 'sash.' Normally, this band is easy to produce it's just a strip of paper wrapped and glued around an album. Instead, the innovations that Dorado implemented were largely ones that enhance the package's aesthetics without simultaneously waving them in your face. The trick though is that the album's packaging - while intensely elaborate - wasn't meant to be in-your-face flashy. Highlighter | Handmade in California at Dorado Mus Portugal laughs, 'I literally walked in here and I said, 'I wanna do something that's never been done before.'' Case in point, the cover of People Under the Stairs's last album, 2010's Highlighter. An artist requesting a tip-on cover is deliberately choosing a slower, more expensive process but they know their choice produces small subtleties that factor into how the consumer literally experiences the record.Д®specially for Dorado, which sets itself up as both a high volume and boutique press, their clients often come to them with a range of manufacturing challenges in order to achieve their artistic visions. But strangely, even though I knew I was holding a CD jacket, it felt like I was holding an LP the texture of the paper, the seam where the paper is glued to the cardboard underneath, were all intensely, viscerally familiar. They are tip-on covers - an unusual choice since the vast majority of CD covers have always been direct-to-board.

As if to prove this point, Freund hands me a recent commission: the CD covers for the new Nick Waterhouse album. The direct-to-board is a faster process and a less expensive process.'Д«ut here's the thing: since paper has a different texture than cardboard, a tip-on cover literally feels differently than a direct-to-board.

It's really just one piece of paper wrapping around and with the vinyl inside, it creates tension. As Freund explains, 'if you go to old record stores, you'll see that have trouble keeping them together. Most record jackets manufactured before the 1980s were tip-ons but direct-to-board has since become the norm. Moreover, is the cover image physically printed onto the cardboard (aka 'direct-to-board')? Or was it printed on paper and then glued-on (aka 'tip-on')? But the cover/jacket itself - as a physical object - is also a product of creative, artistic processes.ДЇor example, even on the most 'ordinary' cover, the cardboard that goes into the construction begins as a single, flat piece to be cut, scored, folded and glued in such a way to create a unitary 'jacket' to protect the vinyl record. When people think about 'album cover art,' they're usually focused on the image on the cover: the photograph, the illustration, etc. We circled a conference table strewn with album jackets of different styles and material and I realized how much I had taken the physical album cover for granted.