Awhile back I blogged about the decline of magazine cover design. Today it’s the miserable state of DVD covers – specifically the awful cover for the American DVD of 24 Hour Party People. What the HELL is up with this?
Yuck yuck yuck! Who the hell at MGM decided that a movie about a conceded nut-job record label impresario needed a murky and poorly designed generic “rave” cover? American ravers aren’t really going to be into it because half the movie is centered on Joy Division and the whole post-punk scene. OK, the other half is about the Happy Mondays (who I’d call more Benny Hill than rave), but this has to be the worst case of a cover having nothing to do with the movie.
The UK DVD is a little bit better. At least there’s a picture of the cast…
What’s funny is that the soundtrack album has the best cover of all. Very striking design that evokes Factory Records’ whole look.
In general DVD covers seem to be afterthoughts these days. For example, the remake of Oceans 11 had a great design to the marketing and advertising posters:
But the DVD? Boring and uninspired:
Perhaps not surprisingly, the net comes to the rescue. Spleenworld has full resolution replacement DVD cover art to hide the ugly ones from the studio (including the boring Oceans 11 one). I’m sure there are more sites out there.