1. HISTORY OF ALBUM PACKAGING & DESIGN

2. WAX CYLINDERS
Thomas Edison began to sell ‘an assortment of musical selections (chosen by Edison himself) on wax cylinders’ after the era’s new invention the phonograph.
These wax cylinders were fragile, and thus needed to have a relatively heavy protection when it came to packaging – rigid card boxes lined with felt.
Aesthetic is important, but its fundamental purpose is functional: the protection and preservation of the wax cylinder.
Wax cylinders were short lived and I believe this was because of their storing practicalities, as opposed to their future competitors they couldn’t just be popped onto a shelf with little maintenance.
Awkward in design and in storage, which is why they were replaced the gramophone record, more commonly known as vinyl. (DUN DUN DUNNNNNNN)

3. VINYL PACKAGING
The development of vinyl came about around the same time as the wax cylinder, with the two co-existing for the wax cylinders’ time in the cultural limelight.
The packaging for vinyl discs as we know them now was less sturdy than the wax cylinders – protection was low on the list of the designer’s priorities.
Two types of packaging existed for the vinyl record discs, one was packing paper with the manufacture’s trademark stamped onto it, and the other was a blank sleeve with a hole in the middle.
The first individual designs were created for classical music, and because of the piece’s length, had to be made onto several discs thus forcing designers to come up with a sturdier alternative to packaging. The packaging created as an answer to this issue is where the term ‘album’ was coined; paste board was used to create sturdy boxes that had a significant resemblance to photo albums.
These early albums had little decoration with typography featured on the front and spine.

4. VINYL PACKAGING CONTINUED
The positive attitude towards album cover design followed The Great Depression; the late 1930’s brought a more contempary look to cover design, beginning to feature violent colours.
This development turned album cover design into a note worth field in the artistic community that attracted various designers as well as fine artists.
It also began the change, in my view, from packaging being used for a practical use, maintaining the record, to being used for the aesthetic possibilities to market the album.
It often seems now, when looking at vinyl cover design, that although the vinyl was build to last, the packaging was not.
“They were large enough to make you feel like you were taking home your very own work of art” (regarding LPs) – Tony Bennett
Is it essential for the selling of album’s to give this elegance in artwork, and cross the link between music and art to a point where one’s incentive for buying a copy of their favourite music is the artwork and the ability to view it in a personal environment?
Obviously, that isn’t the only incentive to buy an album, but I think when LP’s came into play that it definitely had some sort of influence. Protection wise, the packaging offers very little, and it’s expected that the consumer will buy ulterior packaging for it i.e. a case
The development of poster-like artwork for cover design was brought about by a Mr. Alex Steinweiss, whose work incorporated various European design movements that were popular at the time. His covers also set the standard for other design companies.

5. CASSETTE TAPE
Cassette tapes didn’t provide much in the way of packaging, although it did bring around the cassette tape box as a form of packaging:
A hard plastic box, which provided a very significant increase in the practical side of packaging and increased preservation and protection.
The cassette tape packaging provided a lot of issues and had great constraints on both the designer and the consumer.
The typical cassette box was a drastic change from the twelve and a quarter inch square of the album cover.
On a consumer level, the main issue was the inability to be able to browse cassette tapes in the same way they had previously been able to browse LPs and other record discs.
In retail, the information that was visible to the customer consisted mainly of the spine, which relates similarly to the way that record discs had been presented in the past.
Larger 12-inch boxes were attempted for the sake of in-store convenience, but were quickly discontinued.
Be all this as it may, there was one revolution that came out of cassette that would eventually link to the digital era of design: portable music players – it was this kick start into portability that led later onto the creation of Walkman, MP3 players and general portable music software i.e. Spotify or Apple Music.

6. CD JEWEL CASE & DIGITAL
The introduction of compact discs (CDs) brought a more digital revolution to the way people listened to music and was a great step in the marketing and consumption of music, but it needed a new form of packaging.
Most CD packaging consists of a clear ‘Jewel Box’ that was close to a square in shape, and they normally contain a booklet which slides into the lid of the box, providing cover design.
Although they were a great improvement on the short-lived cassette, many buyers complained that although they were paying much more money for a product, The design has since improved, including vivid full-colour printing on the cover, but the insides are often in grayscale.
Many designers were, and I imagine still are, frustrated with the packaging of CDs and argued that the physical design of the CD jewel box is only good in size; otherwise they are made out of cheap plastic which has an alarming tendency to crack or brake at the hinges. CDs did not allow for the same surface textures of LPs, cardboard and paper would scratch the disc leaving it useless, so although the packaging had flaws, it also was built for the fundamental purpose of protecting and preserving the quality of the record disc.
Although CDs were not as difficult to display in retail as cassettes were, they still posed issues – since jewel boxes take up less than half of the space of an LP and around three times the width, CDs were more difficult to flick through for a consumer and lost a lot of ‘browsability’ of the product.
Digital development has caused designers grieve too: how are you meant to get your name out there If there is no fine print on the album with your name on it? Along with the digitalization of music, the digitalization of artwork has taken away a lot of experimentation that we see in previous designs – there’s no playground for artists anymore.