dude that looks awesome..

good work! mind sharing your sources?? :P

Alvin,
Those look amazing! When I started this thread a while back I was hoping I'd stumble upon a really great idea that fit what I was looking for and I think your design is it.

The photos make that type of packaging possible, are you taking these yourself or getting them from the photographer? Where and how are you getting these printed up?

Hi guys!
Glad that you guys appreciate the packaging. They are all custom-made by us. You can't find the service anywhere.

We also faced the problem of finding a suitable packaging for our works when we 1st started out. Nothing works. Hence we started making our own. And now there are of a quality higher than the professional digitray-based music albums you find in CD stores. And we also have a black wooden jacket sleeve to hold the album (with a nice ribbon too). The sleeve is where we'll hotstamp our brandname. Our couples love it. Truly their very own wedding video album. No 2 designs are the same.

We do produce such packaging for thoes interested. However, overseas freight cost may be deemed too expensive for a start by most. But we believe if one's works is worth several thousands of dollars, the packaging should live up to it.

Interested parties may contact us offline.



The photos were captured by the wedding photographers.

The works featured on these 2 of my packagings were done by:
little.RED.dot photography (http://www.littlereddotphotography.com)
Red Co. Photography (http://www.redcophotography.com)

Sorry to rehash an older post but i think this is always a reoccurring subject with time.

has anyone gotten a new type of packaging for your DVDs? And i'm not talking about DVD sleeves but more the out side pocket sleeve, or package box. I've seen some pretty creative ones but i wanted to know what you guys and who you use to make your packaging.

Here are a few samples of my favorites and what i'm looking for.

By far #1 is from Alvin

Custom packaging: Alvinadelinewedding Disc Packaging (http://www.flickr.com/photos/35178959@N07/sets/72157618505229460/)

Simple but classy
Black & White Box (http://infocus.typepad.com/.a/6a0112790235f728a40112790d3f9128a4-pi)

Some other nice one but not my first choice
Gallery - Glory Workz (http://www.gloryworkz.com/slideshow.html)

Please share any information as we are trying to improve our final delivery product to our customers this year.

Thank you.

I am so impressed with the time, effort and expertise which so many people are putting into the packaging of their product. I start that way because I wouldn't want anyone to think I was denigrating the quality of their work. But I do have an entirely different view about the packaging of our product, perhaps because I was initially trained in marketing.

To my mind, there are three objectives or tasks for the packaging of disks available commercially for sale or rent.

1 To protect the product and keep it in top condition.

2) To catch the eye of the potential purchaser/renter, grasping the attention from other competing products,

3) Holding that attention, providing more information to encourage the potential purchaser to decide to buy/rent the product, ie make the sale.

Once it's done the packaging only has to fulfill objective 1, maintaining the disk in good condition.

My view is that in wedding videos (or corporate or event or any other form of commissioned or sponsored production which is to be distributed rather than sold) the sale has been made before the recording is even started. In the specific case of weddings, as far as the purchaser is concerned, the packaging only has to meet the first criterion, protecting the product. As far as the clients are concerned it's the programme/s on the disk which matter.

Of course, the packaging does have another purpose - but for us, not the clients. That is to impress other potential purchasers.

If I truly bothered about "chance" referrals (people who see the disk on the shelf rather than watching the programmes) I'd feel that the time and effort and skill others put into their packaging was worthwhile, but that's not the model of our business.

Finally, my views about the time spent on the disk face are even more different to most other people's.

Unless the outer packaging is transparent (in which case I consider the disk face in the same light as the printed insert sheet) the disk face is only seen for the few seconds which elapse as the client opens the case and puts the disk in the player. Does that really justify all the effort and time others put into it?

We supply a good quality black library case. The insert has a nice photo taken from the video of the couple, usually during the ceremony, their names and the date of the wedding. Those details are repeated on the spine. The back is reserved for our logo, contacts and legal notes with a reference to the holographic sticker on the front face of the insert showing that the music copyright clearance has been paid.

As I said at the outset, I admire the quality of other people's work; for our market at least, I just find it difficult to justify.

I agree with Philip that the disc face and box are not really an essential part of the delivered package.

However, some clients see a physical demo and you want to at least meet the DVD industry standards for packaging. So a nice, easy and inexpensive package becomes a necessary standard.

Plus, it takes about 5 minutes to throw together one of my DVD box PSD layouts like the one below plus a sheet of high quality paper for each print.

In the home burned disc market, the Taiyo Yuden Watershield DVD media is still currently the industry standard with a full color DVD face print with a compatable printer, usually an Epson. This also takes very little time and adds almost no cost.

So for extremely low costs and very little time you get:

Been receiving a few email enquiries on our DVD packaging. Thanks guys... Will reply you guys individually.

I guess we all agree with Philip that the contents of the DVD is definitely much more important than the packaging. It is the movie that sells, not the wrapping. I personally spend weeks on each wedding proj during post, but spend only half a day on the design and production of the DVD packaging.

However, I've seen some good wedding works that are being let down by bad packaging. The quality on the outside belittles the quality inside. Wouldn't a bride want to bring home her exclusive wedding video album presented as professionally as the works inside?
Photo albums are presented so beautifully. Why can video albums be so?

IMO a good DVD packaging is merely the icing to the cake. But it is the icing that makes the cake stand out from the crowd. Whenever I whip out my final deliverables to show my wedding couples (after impressing them with my content works), I never fail to notice that wide-eye expressions and that little elbow nudge the bride gives the groom. I know I can seal the deal.

In my local industry where the norm is either the plastic DVD sleeve or a generic custom-made case with the production company's name imprinted, a professionally customized-to-the-couple DVD packaging completes the perfect buying experience for the couple.

I agree with Philip

Spending 2 days on DVD case design seems a little silly. I probably take less than an hour to design burn and print. During the wedding photoshoot I shoot a few stills on the camera (Ok they are only 2 megapixels but print up great)
I have a template for both the cover and the disk and use a selection of my stills to provide the disk background and cover sleeve.

I use simply plastic cases but the sleeve is printed on photo quality inkjet paper and under the transparent protector looks professional. I can safely say that every bride is delighted when she sees the case and I always get compliments about it!!

I reckon that's all you need to do.. time is money !!

Chris

I totally agree with Alvin, in that it does add the extra buying experience, the cherry on the sunday. You must remember that if you want to charge a premium for your services, the content has to be superior then the norm but your packaging/image is as important. When the customer receives the their DVD the first impression will be from the packaging the way it is laid out, the creativity, print quality, the built of the product...

Jeff, IMO your DVD & DVD sleeve may illustrated the couples special day very eloquently but to me it would need a little bit more je ne sais quoi to give it that expensive "retail" look to it. For example the DVD logo is simply added to your label. I would've maybe rounded the corners or made it white on the darker background. The text is added over the picture in a way that you wouldn't see on a retail disc and i would've picked a different font instead of the default Microsoft Comic font.

I'm not saying its the wrong way to do it, to each is own, i'm just saying for my business and my type of clientele, i want to put in extra money and effort to give that extra customer experience.

pardon me while I choke on the price of those album covers .... ack ack!!!

wow. No room to mark those up. I know I would NOT sell any more than ONE of those every other year. That is just too danged expensive now days.

This site has the same folio DVD cases for half that price:

wholesale photo albums wholesale wedding albums wholesale flushmount albums - CD/DVD Cases (http://www.prophotoalbums.com/cddvdcases.aspx)

Ask for Charlene and tell her I sent you!

Ask for Charlene. She sells wholesale. The leather DVD Folio cases are $21 each. Tell her I sent you. ;-)

wholesale photo albums wholesale wedding albums wholesale flushmount albums - CD/DVD Cases (http://www.prophotoalbums.com/cddvdcases.aspx)

We definitely go to the extra effort of designing artwork for the DVD case and DVD face. We think it's very important because it literally is the first thing your clients see when they pick up their DVD's. If you can get them excited with the DVD packaging, you're likely to have them enjoy the production more. The same can be said for the DVD menu, since that is the first thing couples see when they pop the DVD in the player.

We also make sure we're not just handing over some DVD cases when the couple picks them up. We have each case individually shrink-wrapped (gives them that sense of having a professional product) and we place the cases in a nice gift bag with tissue paper and the gift bag is foil-stamped with our logo. We also include a package of gourmet popcorn and some chocolates. Our couples end up loving their DVD's before they even get them into the DVD player.

At the very least, your DVD packaging should fit with your production. If you're producing budget productions for budget brides, then it makes complete sense to provide budget packaging. Anything more will not gain you much. But if you're providing a higher end production and your DVD packaging has a budget look to it, that will reflect poorly on your business branding and will likely hurt you in terms of the couple's first impression of their DVD's. And as we know, first impressions are everything. d;-)

Travis - who do you use to shrink wrap your dvds and the branding of the packaging (do they do things other than gift bags)

Louis

We do all the design for the artwork ourselves, but we then farm out the production (which includes the shrink wrapping) to a local duplication company. As for the brand packaging, we're currently having our branding redesigned so we're looking at all sorts of new companies, and will likely see a dozen or so at WPPI. But in the past we were using several different companies.

For branded boxes we were going through Rice Studio Supply and for the gift bags we were using Enhanced Imaging (I think that was the name).

I'll try and remember to provide an update on companies after we return from WPPI and make a decision on our new supplier.

EDIT: by the way, the shrink wrapping is super cheap and more than worth the cost .. couples feel like their DVD's are brand new with the shrink wrap on them

yeah the shrink wrapping is mostly what i'm interested in. I do all my own artwork as well but i have a local printer do the printing, and do the printing on the discs myself. If there is a company that I can use to duplicate the discs and shrink wrap them thats what i'll do.

I'm sure in your area it should be no problem to find a company that does both. If not, check with places like Kinkos for shrink wrapping. Good luck!

Thanks! look forward to upping my packaging game at my next wedding.

When a bride comes to my studio to pick up her video, the first thing she sees is her video on the TV screen. I then show her the DVD menu layout. She then falls in love with her video. I could hand her the wedding video wrapped in the Obituary section of the newspaper and she probably wouldn't care at that point.

How many disks are you producing if your having them professionally printed?

Here in the UK if you want DVD inserts or custom printed DVD's made and duplicated there is normally a minimum order of at least 100. For this reason its more cost effective to just print your own on really high quality DVD's (unless your giving the clients 100 copies that is).

For years weve used lightscribes, they may be black and white and the disks cost slightly more but the shiny image which doesnt rub off plus zero operating costs.

Its only recently weve started printing our own as we had to buy a printer for the blu-ray disks (no BD lightscribe media around) and that my brother gave us about 200 ink carts for our printer.

We now use plain black or white plastic dvd cases, we used to use fancy cases which cost a fortune and realised most of our costs were in the cases. The placcy ones with custom printed inserts made more of an impression than the fancy boxes ever did and cost a fraction to produce. The layout is a template where we insert custom images, change the names and text.

Kevin is right, Avatar, the most expensive movie in the world will be released and be delivered in a cheap plastic DVD case.

We have been shrink wrapping our showreel demo's for over a year now. Full face printed onto shinka watershield discs with a great glossy look and designed cases. Showed this at our seminar at the Ricoh Arena in October last year!

Works a treat. First impressions do count.

Cheers.

John De Rienzo

[QUOTE=Michael Liebergot;977004]We have been using clear plastic DVD cases and creating custom DVD cover artwork for the last 4-5 years.

We have recently added DVD Tins with a clear window (DVD Tins (http://www.american-digital.com/prodsite/product.asp?p=2105&c=1960&name=TinDVDCase,WithWindow,NoIndent)) as a different packaging option.

We use this option with our lowest priced packages. This way no cover artwork is required. All we design is the DVD disk artwork, which are printed on hub printable Watershield DVDs.

I just ordered the "tins" and I am very happy with them.

These are all great for people who charge a bundle for there packages.

I charge $25 for extra an extra DVD wether it be SD or Blu-Ray.

I use black Memorex DVD Cases ( I will switch to white soon)

I use Memorex DVD-R

For DVD Labels I use SureThing Photo Labels. (These look wonderful for low budget peeps)

For DVD Cover Art I use the Surething DVD Case Insert which are a Matte, which I hate but they look pretty good when you have a good printer. I don't have to cut anything.

I gonna go with the tins and Surething photo labels for Blu-Ray and White DVD cases from here on out.

Thanks for posting this. There is some great looking stuff out there.

If anyone wants to sell me a template for a DVD Insert PM me.