New Order - Definitive

I was asked to create a series of box sets celebrating the studio albums by New Order. Recreate the original LP vinyl, a miniature CD version, unreleased audio CD, DVDs of live shows and a 48-page hardback book.

Solution
With New Order’s album covers holding iconic status, I began crafting a unifying design concept that would honour their legacy and remain relevant throughout a 10 to 15-year campaign.

The pivotal challenge was to create a design that celebrated each album without overshadowing the significance of the original album artworks; it needed to be in harmony with them. This design had to be enduring, consistently supporting these albums.

The concept was to distil the essence of each album into a single, representative colour. When all ten boxes were displayed together, one could choose an album by its unique colour.

We adopted a Swiss-inspired typographic system featuring a contemporary font employed across the boxes. Swiss design played an integral role in New Order’s previous designs, and the chosen font conveyed a fresh release without bias towards any particular album.

The font used both a serif version for titles and body text and a sans version for track lists and captions. By introducing ‘text figures’, we added a level of flexibility to the otherwise rigid track lists.

As of now, we are preparing for the release of the fourth box set.