Box Vox

packaging as content

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April 22, 2010

In Six Moves

MoonUnit

Another Rubik’s Cube related package1. On Tuesday we featured Invader’s “Rubikcubist” recreations of famous album covers. Yesterday we looked at the original Hungarian package for Rubik’s Cube. Today we’re looking at a more recent vinyl record release, “In Six Moves” by the Almería-based band, Moon Unit. (No relation to Frank Zappa’a daughter, I don’t think—and not to be confused with the Gasgow-based, Moon Unit.2) The cover with Rubik’s Cube graphics is by Almería-based design studio, Globulart Diseño:

The title of the LP came during a conversation with David Bailey, singer and lead guitar of the band; the idea was to use the famous Rubik’s Cube to take advantage of some coincidences:

The LP contains six songs / the cube has 6 sides.
The world record in solving the Rubik’s Cube is six moves / again, the concept of the six songs.

Except for the CMYK color palette, the cover illustration is remarkably similar to the illustration featured on the original Politechnika Rubik’s Cube packaging which is maybe appropriate considering both products were manufactured and packaged in Eastern Bloc countries. (“In Six Moves” was pressed and printed at a factory in the Czech Republic.)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

(Four footnoted digressions, after the fold…)


Footnoted digressions:

EarthPuzzle Hungarian-made Earth-puzzle via: Baxterweb Puzzle Auctions

1. Ok, I know today is Earth Day and I really ought to be acknowledging that (as we've done in the past), but I am trying to stay “on point” and this week’s talking points are: dripping paint, Campbell’s Soup, Rubik’s Cubes and album covers. I couldn't find the a picture of the box that this earth puzzle above came in, anyway. Still, whenever you see the Earth depicted as a puzzle, the metaphorical implications could not be more obvious. Solve the world’s problems in six moves? As if.

2. I feel for these Spanish3 lads, I do. It’s a bummer to have attained a certain local band/brand recognition, only to realize too late that there’s another band out there with the same name. This happened to me with my NY-based band, Cargo Cult, when around 1986 we learned of another Cargo Cult, based in Austin. Worse yet, their lead singer was also named “Randy.” (The late, Randy “Biscuit” Turner) Potential for “consumer confusion”? I’d say so. In fact, I know of at least one record review where the reviewer concluded that the Austin-based based band’s singer had changed his last name and that the whole band now played a different style of music. Lucky for us, he thought it an improvement, but it mattered not. Although both “Cargo Cults” are now relatively obscure, I reckon, that our obscurity ultimately exceeds theirs.


3. Speaking of Rubick’s Cubes, metaphors, culture, and Spain—although I do not, myself, speak Spanish—I can infer enough from the opening credits of Peris Romano’s “El Efecto Rubik” 4 to see that the Rubik’s Cube puzzle metaphor is here being applied to human relationships. “Imagine
that your life is like a Rubik's cube, and each color corresponds to
each one of the most important aspects that revolve around you…” (See: video below)


4. Oh—and there’s also a band called “Efecto Rubik” from Spain.

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