This turned up during a sort out recently, a label I designed for an Ian Gillan CD for RPM Records in 1992. Not exactly an earth shattering piece of work but some of the technology might be worth noting. At the time CD label printing was still a bit of a work in progress, with some plants able to do more detailed designs than other. I recall one Cyndi Lauper CD I bought which had one of the first colour photos on the label, and not too long after the ink failed and it began to flake off! So to be on the safe side RPM stuck to basic designs and used a solid ink background in white (here shown by the black half circle) and a dark second ink with the text and a contrasty photo to avoid the need for a half tone. All CD plants used to specify slightly different diameters and centre hole print guidelines. At this time we were still using art board and paste up, which the pressing plants would shoot onto film to make the rubber plates to print onto the discs (so for all those indents on the CD titles, I cut the typesetting with a knife and moved them by eye!). Normally these would be filed along with the production master but in this case the plant closed down and returned items to the labels.
Before long we moved to do all the artwork digitally on a Mac and generate the film directly and so there was no more physical artwork as such. The pressing plant’s paperwork also came back, you can see where they marked up the sheet to show the design and the checks needed before it was printed. RPM as a label closed recently and left this address in the 1990s.
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