Millennium Magazine Special Edition
About the artwork – from BigYellowBiohazard himself:
“I’ve been working on this for about three months, on and off. I’ve wanted to make some kick-ass packaging (from the ground up) for awhile, and felt like I’d done a reasonable job with Watchmen and The Duel Project (which I haven’t submitted yet), but these attempts have come up short, either because the boxes turn out flimsy, or I’m just not satisfied with how far I’ve taken the concept. I am this time. 
The inspiration for this came simply from reading Stieg Larsson’s three sociological-critiques-cum-crime-novels, which I can credit with breaking my year-long bookless existence. They are extraordinary. Read them if you haven’t yet, your mind will love you for it.
The books have been made into three Swedish-language films, which have had a fair amount of love spewed at them – as well as some negativity, naturally. I haven’t seen them yet. The first one won’t be out here until next month. But this is all irrelevant, more or less.
I wanted to create some luxurious, exciting boxwork that centered around the idea that Millennium is a genuine magazine, and the films (or books) are issues of the magazine itself. This isn’t a particularly original idea, I grant you – the Swedish publisher Norstedts gave the first editions pseudo-magazine covers, but they were very crime-fictiony and didn’t really commit to the pretence. Because in the real world people would be confused and maybe annoyed by products being all meta and pretending to be something they’re not.
So the three films are dressed up, albeit in normal DVD Amaray cases (little old me is limited to certain materials!), as magazine issues; each film is presented as a cover article by Mikael Blomkvist, the male protagonist of the stories. Lisbeth, the female protagonist, is featured somewhere on each cover. The front covers are based on Peter Mendelsund’s incredible covers for the US Vintage editions of the books.
I’ve elected to stick with direct translations of the book/film titles as, in my opinion, they better suit the stories than the slightly trying too hard “Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” format. The third book has never really had a good English translation. “Luftslottet som sprängdes”, I understand, literally means “The air-castle that was blown up” – “air-castle” is a term used in Swedish not to mean “castle in the sky” but specifically “castle made of air”, referring to a pipedream; a fanciful, impossible or doomed idea. After playing around with the meaning some, I came up with “The Aircastle Explodes”, which retains the exact meaning, but is more concise and dramatic.
The Millennium logotype itself is an original design, which is intended to resemble a barcode. The Millennium of the books deals with finance and economics. You’ll see the barcode allusion more explicitly on the cover of the booklet (Details 5-8, see below).
On the back of each “issue” is an mock advert for women’s charity YellowBird (my little fiction; YellowBird is actually the company that produced the films). See the links below or my gallery for these.
The box itself is made of 2mm board, scored and bound with mounting tape. Three pieces of A4 kraft (brown) paper
were printed, in black, with details of the Millennium logotype, then cut to size and spray-mounted to the shell.
There is also a black-on-white label for the outer box, not featured here. See the links below to view it.
The envelope seen here is handmade, again from a single piece of kraft paper to enclose the booklet (see Details 5-8).
The booklet is 8 pages, printed in black, two shades of grey and gold (page 7 features the yellow, red and silver of the “issues”. The cover depicts the Millennium barcode and the title “The Economics Of Truth: Millennium, Collected 2005-2007″. Pages 1-6 feature a brief essay on the trilogy, written by me. Page 7 features the credits and DVD specs for the films. The back cover features a closing quote from Blomkvist and copyright info.
The booklet is bound with a simple stitch bind, using common white embroidery thread.”
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Visit BigYellowBiohazard’s profile and check his gallery of other cool works!
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Other stuff you might like:
Best Fan Art – Gallery III
Best Fan Videos
Salander Wallpaper
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Categories: From the Fans
1 Comment »
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March 6th, 2010 at 8:02 PM
this is so cool =)