Manufacturing - Part 16

Two weeks before I scheduled the meeting with the graphic artist, I needed to make very specific decisions about which templates were available for the CD's that OASIS, the manufacturer had available. There were choices of Digipaks, Zero-Carbon Footprints; Green Wallets, Jewel Cases and more. I didn't want to go for the very affordable PLASTIC jewel case: Too much plastic. I / 1746 Records had gone for the full cardboard 'Wallet' a couple albums back, yet that product wore down easily. The Jewel Case - all plastic, cracked easily when we sent CD's in the mail. So what we had decided on was the Digipak that OASIS offered. This was a highly durable board-package construction with a high quality protective (plastic) tray. Folks, My record company and I Really tried to avoid plastic, yet, the full on 'Wallet' wasn't protecting the CD enough.  Jeeze...I know this is TMI  (too much information) Lol. The decision was also made NOT to include an insert which would hold a booklet with all the lyrics. As much as I, the writer/performer/producer wants to have everyone to have the access to read the lyrics, it is just is not cost effective. The amount of folks buying CD's/LP's/Vinyl was diminishing compared to the digital sales. So the Digipak 4-panel was the template to then place the decided photos and credits upon. I sent this template to Christie/graphic artist two weeks before our meeting. This would allow her to know ahead of time what she would be able to prepare for, along with the documents I was sending. This saved us both time. Time meant money. Yet more than that: it allowed her, to spend more time relaxing into her artistry of designing...breathing and having fun creating the best product possible. No artist wants to log in time typing lyrics or credits. That's insulting. Lol.

After the graphic artist send me the proofs, I proposed very minor adjustments, mostly in the credits/script, etc. Soon thereafter, she sent the album art files to the manufacturer (OASIS Manufacturing).  

A week later the agent from OASIS contacted me after reviewing the files. There was a problem with the font being too small on the CD itself. So I contacted the graphic artist to inform her about this. The details of this were taken care of before I could give the final "OK", get the CD's/products manufactured.

Little details that were actually BIG details on the tail end all added up to decisions that had to be made, while the clock was ticking to make the deadlines work for the release of Chakra Bleu's 9th album!

 

 

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