I was delighted to hear the news that my design for British Music Experience CD case won second prize in the PaperCo’s 2009 MCS (Maine, Chromomat, Satimat) competition.

A year before Britain’s new interactive museum of popular music opened, I was asked to design CD style promotional pack for the British Music Experience (BME). The BME is a permanent exhibition at The O2 arena, dedicated to the history of pop music over the past 60 years. I went for a retro style, keeping with British colours from the Union Jack.

The BME pack was printed by PrintHouse Corporation. It is a 125mm square booklet using 400gsm Chromomat Club for the cover and 170gsm Chromomat for inside pages. It was printed on Printhouse Corporation’s Speedmaster, a B1 format SM102-6-P, running Kodak Electra Excel HRL plates.

The design was gloss laminated throughout and involved some complex finishing. The design was die cut into shape, glued to give a double thickness front page but leaving an open ended CD pocket on the back page. The text pages were then taped and saddle-stitched into the case to give a really classy finish.

400gsm Chromomat was used, because of the coated cover weight for maximum strength & durability, but at the same time it retains excellent colour vibrancy throughout. The BME is an interactive exhibition with strong visual content (and sound…) and I wanted to convey this with eye-catching imagery contained in a small, user-friendly promotional pack.

The second prize secured me a weekend to Florence. I will undertake this in the beginning of spring 2010. I can not wait!