Madonna: Erotica - Expanded Box Set
MUSIC PACKAGING CONCEPT ART & DESIGN : APRIL - SEPTEMBER 2020
MUSIC PACKAGING CONCEPT ART & DESIGN : APRIL - SEPTEMBER 2020
"As her stardom snowballed through the Eighties and early Nineties, AIDS decimated the scene that helped birth Madonna... Just as racism and the Black Lives Matter movement shaped Beyoncé’s Lemonade, AIDS and ACT UP – the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, the direct action advocacy and educational group whose motto was “Silence = Death” – yielded Erotica and Sex... Sensuality was merely part of the picture: Erotica is Madonna’s concept album about love and intimacy under the shadow of plague." - Rolling Stone
"If Madonna’s image seemed aggressive up until this point, her music was warm, inviting, and accessible (it was pop by definition—hell, she defined pop music in the ‘80s), which made her next-generation version of feminism a lot easier to swallow—or, to some, tolerable—in the era of AIDS and Reagan. By 1992, Madonna was an icon—untouchable, literally and figuratively—and Erotica was the first time the artist’s music took on a decidedly combative, even threatening tone, and most people didn’t want to hear it." - Slant Magazine
"Apart from her three greatest hits, Madonna has not shown much interest in repackaging and expanding her back catalogue... The Sex book may be one controversial chapter, in a career full of controversy, that Madonna wishes to keep firmly shut. However, I think if [an Erotica] super deluxe edition was [released]... there would be massive demand from collectors and Madonna fans alike." - SuperDeluxeEdition.com
After the release of my Immaculate Collection box set project, I chose Erotica to be the next Madonna project I would work on, as it's one of her most important, challenging, creative albums, and something that would stretch me as a designer.
My main design inspiration was Fabien Baron, who was one of the original designers of Sex and Erotica, and his style and brilliance has only increased in the last 30 years with his award-winning work at Interview, Vogue, Calvin Klein and Harper's Bazaar. His book Fabien Baron: Works 1983-2019 in particular was a great inspiration to me.
I wanted this box set to look something like how he might design it in 2020, with a focus on the large, strong typography hidden away in Erotica's 1992 longbox, booklet and CD artwork. I moved away from the bright blue of the album art and stuck to a limited palette of black, white, silver and gold. The single artworks are replicas of the original designs from 1992-1993.
The box part of the box set: a glossy black box with a spot-UV black typographic effect with a gold embossed foil "Erotica" title.
The typography design comes from the original album's 1992 CD long box.
Inside the box is a vinyl copy of the album, a hardcover book, five lithographs, and two additional boxes containing CD sleeves and 7" vinyl.
This vinyl cover is a replication of the original, printed on highly reflective mirror board, as a nod to the mylar foil packaging of Madonna's "Sex" book.
This edition includes all-new inner sleeve and gatefold designs based on the "Sex" book. The inner sleeves are printed on metallic stock. The album is pressed on two white smoke 12" vinyl records.
The first smaller box in this collection opens to reveal 11 card sleeves holding 10 CDs and one Blu-Ray.
The discs include: the remastered album, demos and live tracks, the infamous "Rain Tapes" demos across two CDs, four CDs of all the remixes from the 1992-1993 singles, audio from the 1993 tour "The Girlie Show" split across two CDs, and a Blu-Ray of audio and video content.
"The Rain Tapes" are legendary among Madonna fans and collectors. These cassette tapes were created during the album's demo stages and were submitted to the U.S. Library of Congress for copyright registration. Fans nicknamed them "The Rain Tapes" because of the prominence of Rain in the track list.
"The Rain Tapes" are included in this collection as two CDs, preserving their original order for historical accuracy.
The second smaller box in the set opens to reveal seven 7" vinyl singles.
The vinyl singles are all pressed on white vinyl. The set includes six singles from "Erotica" and "This Used To Be My Playground", a single released to promote the film "A League of Their Own", which went to #1 in the US charts. "Playground" was written and recorded midway through the Erotica album sessions by the same creative team, so it seems fitting to include this largely-forgotten classic song.
A deluxe hardcover book is the centrepiece of the box set, full of interviews, press, photo shoots, and stories from the making of "Erotica" and "Sex" and their impact on the world in the years since, with a special written foreword by Madonna.
Limited-edition fine art lithograph prints would also be included. They showcase the five music videos filmed to promote "Erotica" and its singles.
Browse more of my Madonna box set projects:
Listen to my appearance on the podcast "Inside the Groove":
