© Daniel Will Harris

Hands on Java package design

This same author produced a CD-ROM, and I designed the package and CD. Since it was "hands on," it seemed obvious to use hands, and sometimes "obvious" is not a bad way to go—if you do it well.

I used a hand from the CMCD PhotoDisc of hands, used Xara's drawing feature to outline it, then slice it out. I took the drawing I did of the CD and imported it and placed it into the hand. I created bitmap patterns of hands for two of the squares, and used Xara's fractal clouds for the other two—and put those on top of smaller cut out hands, so it has a lot of depth. This printed beautifully, and it's like being able to see the final CD (which really does look like this). The typefaces used are Cezanne (hand edited) and Adobe Celestia from Mark Van Bronkhorst—a gorgeous typeface that's kind of like a modern Garamond—with rough edges. This was used for the rest of the type on the package, and it's beautiful at large and small sizes.