Harmless Records 7" Box Set
- Client
Harmless Records - Date
May 2004
For one of their final releases, Harmless Records put together a 7” box set, limited to 100 copies, featuring 9 overstocked records from the label’s past alongside a new, exclusive record featuring the final tracks from the short-lived and over-awesome Boy Named Sue, and the entire recording session from the far-to-short-lived ’84 Mariners. The set was not just a way for Scott to clear the closet (which, let’s be truthful, it was that) but also a fun way to celebrate more than a decade of the label highlighting some of the best pop/punk/hardcore that the midwest had to offer.
For the packaging, we talked with Scott and decided that the best thing to do would be to use 7” mailing boxes to contain the records. They were the perfect size and symbolized the closet cleaning perfectly. For the artwork, we got our hands on a large box of overprinted record covers from one of Scott’s old releases. The insides were unprinted, so we tore the covers in half, leaving us 7.5” squares. We then went over to our friends at Starshaped Press and set a background for the cover, using all the bands that were featured in the set, in wood type utilizing as many typefaces as we could fit. The background ended up being 15” tall, so we split it in two, resulting in two different backgrounds of 50 each. Then the record title and pertinent information was set, once again, utilizing as many faces as we could get our hands on, and printed on top of that, often before the first inking had dried. I was a bit worried that the multiple faces would result in a clusterfuck of epic proportions (which would have also been an apt metaphor relating to a couple of the releases contained in the set) but instead the final artwork really worked out better than any of us had hoped for. We glued them up on the boxes and they flew out as fast as Scott could get them to the post office.