DVD Cover design

In this post, I shall be leaving the realm of Animation and entering the realm of Product Design; something that I haven't done properly since I was about 16 but I still remember a few things.

When designing my DVD cover, I decided that I wanted something that could be made cheaply and easily, so that I could distribute my showreel around with ease.  Initially, I wanted to do a 4-panel DVD wallet, also known as a lancing pack, as demonstrated in the image below

I also made a template for my DVD wallet in Photoshop, which looked like this.  Click to enlarge

However, there were quite a few problems with producing this design.  First of all, I did not have a printer or paper large enough to print this whole template; therefore I considered outsourcing the production of the piece to a company that specialises in DVD/CD packaging.

I had a look at many different services online, such as this one called webs4cd.  However, this service, much like others required you to order a minimum of around 250-300 wallets and this would cost around £474 including VAT.  This would be alright if I was intending to make a profit from these DVDs, but for a student project or a showreel DVD that is intended to be distributed freely, I could not really justify paying that much for so many wallets.

Therefore, I had to look at other means of producing my DVD wallet.  After doing a bit of searching, I came across a business based on ebay called SRN that sell various DVD and CD packaging products as well as printable photo paper.  I came across this product which consisted of 50 sheets of A4 CD/DVD printable wallets which costed only £3 and free postage.

The only thing about the paper was that it was 2 panel wallets and therefore I needed to compromise the look of my design.  I then redesigned it and came up with this:

Now the next thing to do was print this design out on a template and stick it together.  I printed it out and here is the outcome.