There's a Portland radio station, KINK FM 102, that has a fair number of live 'in the studio' performances each year. As a result, for each of the last eight years, they've released a compilation CD with the best of those live performances. Money earned from the CD sales goes to SMART--Start Making A Reader Today, a program that helps at-risk youth develop their reading skills. As such, I feel good about purchasing the CD each year; the fact that there are usually a fair number of tracks I like (almost all are acoustic with simple piano and/or guitar accompanying the voices) is just an added bonus.
So what's all this have to do with technology? Well, this year's CD, Kink Live 8, has one of the most unique, creative 'labels' I've ever seen. Below are small images of both the front and back of the CD:
Click on either image for a larger version in a new window, and you can see the details in the front--it looks just like an old vinyl record (for those of you old enough to remember those). What you can't really see is how much it actually feels like a record, too. The grooves are there, there are smooth areas between each song, and the overall texture is very similar to what I remember of vinyl. The back side is just pure black, and polished to a near mirror-like finish. I didn't even know such things were available, but Froogle quickly pointed out my lack of knowledge on the subject.
That's it; I just wanted to point out a really cool CD label design (and plug a good cause, if you happen to like any of those bands and are in the greater Portland area). It's a nice change of pace from the image- and text-heavy labels that I usually see.