Capitol Records “60” box set

For its 60th anniversary, Capitol Records wanted an “elegant” box set—a collector’s item featuring six CDs, a full-sized book of photographs from its archives and a dramatic paperweight miniature of the company’s office building. Once the paperweight idea was (wisely) scrapped, the physical proportion and design of the piece presented itself. Stacking the CDs in two groups of three allowed the most streamlined configuration, while at the same time mirrored a natural dimension for a book. Finally, the outer slipcase treated the book and CDs as a single volume with an eye toward self-containment and utility. But it needed to be assembled by hand. Arriving in the production mock-ups, the CDs could not be removed from the slipcase with anything less than pliers. A harried trip revealed that the plant had spec’d a lower page count: 1/32 of an inch makes a difference.