Award-winning packaging designer Charles Woodhead talks ‘boxed set design’…

“How are you going to develop an effective solution for holding the disks?”

According to award-winning structural packaging designer Charles Woodhead, it’s the fundamental question designers are challenged with when creating compact disk, “boxed set” packaging. And, it’s the very challenge that Woodhead wrestled with when he was tapped by Universal Studios Home Entertainment as the primary package designer for the DVD boxed set of its blockbuster TV series, “Battlestar Galactica.”

The strikingly otherworldly package design containing the complete, 23-disk set of Battlestar Galactica DVDs was a Best of Show Gold winner in FiberMark’s 17th Annual Specifier Awards. The awards are handed out annually by FiberMark to recognize design professionals who solve challenges using FiberMark products creatively and effectively.

Although Woodhead states that figuring out how to hold the DVDs may have been the central challenge, he says he knew intuitively that his design would also need to have enough sizzle and eye appeal to help set it apart from everything else on the retail shelf. The story of how he addressed both issues makes for a fascinating case study in creative packaging.