Coming Soon: An Exciting New Pack and Ship Experience

For the past couple of years, we've been using the office next door to the studio as a storage space (an occasionally turning it into a photo/sound stage when there's room). It was a fairly typical small office space, with gray laminate desks and walls separating the five or so large rooms. Presumably those had cubicles, big copy machine, water coolers and the like in them at one time (most everything but the smaller offices had been gutted before we moved in). It's been a great space to have over the years, but as we've grown, all the boxes of Jewelboxing, Field Notes, etc. have spilled into our main space. What's more, because they were separate areas, it was becoming more of a burden to go out our door, walk down the hall, unlock the other office's door, grab what you needed, then reverse the process. There had to be a better way.

So over the past couple of months, we laid out a plan for how we could turn the space into an ideal pack and ship area. Liking what we'd come up with, we spent the first part of last week moving everything out and then construction began last Friday and into the weekend, with all those walls being torn down. It's now being painted and the new flooring should be in next week. After that, we can't wait to start putting the whole thing together, hopefully resulting in a much more efficient, much more pleasant to look at pack and ship space.

Overextended Extensions

In the interest of getting everyone in the office in the same room at the same time, every Thursday we have lunch brought over from Jim's wife's incredible catering company, Big Delicious Planet. The discussion topics usually come quick and flow from one tangent to the next, as any good conversation should. At yesterday's lunch (after spending a few minutes talking about why video games don't crash as much as they used to and guessing how the NY Times' bestseller list works), we got to talking about product line extensions.

Amy brought up that we should start making Jewelboxing cozies, knitted-wool wrap-arounds to keep the cases warm in the winter ("They'd be perfect for the holidays!"). Dawson decided we needed a Jewelboxing caddy, a specifically -designed place to store three cases wherever you need them most (like the shower or above the stove). From there, Bryan and Steve attempted to draw this new product line out to an unbearably stupid degree, which went something like this: a) Jewelboxing Case Cozy, b) Jewelboxing Case Cozy Caddy, c) Multi-Caddy Caddy for Jewelboxing Case Cozy Caddies, d) Polishing Kit for Multi-Caddy Caddy for Jewelboxing Case Cozy Caddies, e) and on and on. They kept doing this until just after everyone at the table had long-since stopped paying attention to their babble. Then we all started talking about the next logical topic: how to attach a road map to foamcore.

So while we like to think we're a company that comes up with some interesting ideas from time to time, fortunately we also know when to let well enough alone and keep Jewelboxing pure and simple. Though that said, if you happen to have a friend in the business who can sew a few hundred wool case sweaters, we wouldn't mind hearing about it (Amy was right, the holidays are just around the corner, after all).

Here's to hoping only smart extensions are being extended in Royal Oak, Idaho Springs, Middletown, New York, Pasadena, Louisville, San Jose, Brookline, Quezon City, Franklin, Los Angeles, Portland, Rochester, Santa Monica, Ventura, Tampa, Waxhaw, Raleigh, Plainview, Brooklyn, Las Vegas, Sunnyvale, West Monroe, Malibu, Folsom, Idaho Spings, Turlock, Mequon, and St. Louis.

Individual Paper Packs Now Listed for Purchase

From time to time we'll get calls or e-mails from people who are looking to purchase additional paper packs for their Jewelboxing kits. Maybe they used up all their original paper on a project from last year and didn't wind up sending out all of their cases, which they now want to reuse with an updated design. Or they're interested in creating their own larger, multi-page cover booklet. Whatever the reason, we decided to make the process much easier for anyone in need of extras, so we've just added a Jewelboxing Paper section on our ordering page. From there, you'll be able to quickly choose what sort of paper pack you need, from a complete re-do of the whole set that came in your original Jewelboxing order to individual booklets, trayliners and disc labels for both our King and Standard cases. And if you order before 2:00pm (Central), we'll have your paper shipped off to you that same day, allowing you to get back to printing right away.

An Esteemed Body of Design-Conscious Individuals

Besides when people write in to share with us what they've put together using Jewelboxing, we've had a lot of luck over the years finding interesting projects users have posted on Flickr. We've been really fortunate in seeing that people think so highly of the cases that they've included them in their photo collections that we figured it was about time that we starting collecting up all of this good grace in one central locale. Thus, we've made a new Flickr group for all things Jewelboxing-related, appropriated entitled, "Jewelboxing." Have a photo, or a dozen, of one of your cases that you're particularly proud of? Go ahead and post it up and join the group. And now that we have this esteemed body of design-conscious individuals, we can't promise we'll have annual cook-outs or lapel buttons and secret handshakes to show your allegiance, we can say that we'll appreciate it plenty.

Thanks to all of those who have joined already and here's to hoping there are some flash bulbs a-popping and some photos getting posted right now in Edinburgh, Brooklyn Center, Turlock, Santa Cruz, Zurich, New York, London, Poole, San Ramon, Madison, Chandler, Houston, Addison, Alexandria, Amsterdam, Johnson City, Irvine, Marrickville, West Kirby, and San Jose.

The Will Call Window

On a semi-regular basis, we get a call from a customer saying, "I'm in Chicago and I think I'm right down the street from you. Can I just come pick up my order?" To which, of course, we always say yes. It's a good way for locals to save a couple bucks on shipping, it's nice to say hello to Jewelboxing customers, and it makes us feel almost like a real live brick and mortar. Well somehow this week, after one of these calls, it finally struck us that we should be making it easier for our customers to know that they can easily swing by our Chicago office and pick up their orders. So we've just added this option to the shopping cart:

If you're local and close by, or just in town for a couple of days for meetings or a conference, and you're looking to order, we hope this will provide a quick method to stop by, pick up, say hello, and get to Jewelboxing right away.

Herding the Archives

After four years and more than 200 entries to the Jewelboxing blog, we realized that the archives had grown a bit unruly and it was time to do some organizing. So we went through all of these hundreds of posts and assigned them all to categories, including things like Motion Graphics + Animation, Music projects, Weddings, and Tips we've put up over the years to make your whole Jewelboxing experience all the better. You'll find the whole list of categories over there on the right. We figure this house cleaning will not only help us track things down in the archives, but will also let you more easily browse around and see what people are using Jewelboxing for in the specific areas you're interested in. Happy reading!

Here's to hoping we'll soon be able to categorize all the project being put together in Shanghai, Boston, Charleston, London, Valley Center, Sao Paulo, Lemon Grove, Normal, San Francisco, Chicago, Whitehorse, Northfield, Columbus, Grand Rapids, Clinton Township, McAllen, New York, Ladera Ranch, Tucson, Lone Tree, and Berlin.

Making Noise

It's too quiet here today at JB headquarters, especially because your regular correspondent Steve is traipsing across Nebraska with a camera this week (but that's another story) so we thought we'd make a little noise. No, we aren't starting a band or making a music video. Although now that I've said that, someone will probably want to. Anyway, we want to make a little noise so we are going to give away a free Canon Pixma iP6700D Inkjet printer, our fave and a perfect match for our system.

Starting right now, anyone who places an order for anything from Jewelboxing and drops a line to crew at jewelboxing dot com to tell us they saw this note, will be entered into the pool to win the printer. We'll close the entries at 5:00 CST on Friday, July 27th and announce the winner at 5:01.

Winner Takes All

Tammy from Weddings of the Rockies is our Jewelboxing "Upgrade Me!" winner from last week's Infrequent Mailing. Tammy was paying attention and noticed the contest. She dropped us a line after she made a purchase and her 100pack was randomly picked to become a completely complete Jewelboxing Studio, valued at $764. Congrats on that.

We're always adding special deals and contests just like this, so if you don't want to miss the next one, there's only one thing to do: subscribe. Just add your e-mail address over at the bottom of the Jewelboxing home page and you're all set.

Canon-aid

As you may or may not know, in combination with Coudal.com, our studio site, we send out a mailing via email about once a month. There's always a contest or giveaway and some other foolishness in it. And there's always an offer on Jewelboxing too.

A little while ago the offer was "buy a 100pack of Kings or a 150pack of Standards and write us back saying that you saw the offer in the mailing and we'll give you a $25 instant rebate and throw your name in a hat to win a Canon Pixma Printer free of charge.

Dozens of people took us up on it and Robin Hennig of Tarzana, California was randomly selected to win the printer. Congrats Robin, it's on the way. Most consumer-grade ink-jets do a fine job with our system but none better than the Canon series. They're not lightning-fast but the image quality and color fidelity is great and they handle the 12mil paper perfectly.

Make sure you're on our Infrequent Mailings list simply by giving us your email address at the bottom/right of the JB home page. We won't ever abuse the privilege.

'Jewelboxing Project Name' Goes Here

Now that school's back in session, it's the season of sending out portfolios and reels for those coveted Fall internships. And we're sure some of those packages arriving on desks across the country include a Jewelboxing case. But even if you did land the best gig in town and are now getting coffee for some of the most important people in the business, or completely forgot the whole thing and now have a knee-deep stack of cases you aren't sure what to do with, there's no such thing as too much promotion (or any if you're of that later group), so if you've used Jewelboxing recently for any project you've put together, we'd love to see it. Drop us a line at crew at jewelboxing dot com. If your work is top notch and you convince us you're really a student, we may just send you a batch more cases, on the house.

The Why's and How's of How-To

We've been wanting to make this tutorial video for Jewelboxing for a while now. Sure, we have a lot written up about all the pieces the make up the system and how people use the system. But it's one thing to read through how something works, or even just browse through photos. It's another thing entirely, something much more clear and concise, when you can actually show each and every moment of a process. We thought it might help newcomers to the site understand what the system is all about, and for those who've just ordered, to give them a little heads up on how easy the whole thing is going to be. And that's why we wanted to make a video.

So on Friday of last week, we sat down and figured out just how to go about it. We decided to set up on Dawson's desk because, unlike most of ours, his is usually clean. Unfortunately, we ran into a snag early on, as the two tripods we tried out couldn't seem to raise the camera up high enough to really get the perfect view, the view that a Jewelboxing user would see when putting together their own case. We were stumped for a minute until we remembered the gigantic ladder we have in the storage room. "You want to make a jib?" somebody asked. So we made a shaky, but entirely useable jib and it gave us a terrific bird's eye view of the desk. We opened the windows up, letting in a bunch of light, and then set Dawson to work in putting together a copy of our King Case sample, narrating all the while.

We couldn't be happier with the way it turned out and really hope it provides some good use to someone out there. But hey, if anything, we got to have a lot of fun building something on a Friday afternoon, and we didn't even break the camera. Imagine that.

Almost postive that they've already made dozens of attractive cases in Lancaster, Alhambra, Huntington Station, New York, Rocklin, Preverenges, Remscheid, Columbia, Ft. Myers, Albuquerque, Watt, Scarborough, Toronto, Warrenville, Ladera Ranch, Antwerp, Aveiro, San Diego, Burr Ridge, Chesterfield, Raleigh, Philadelphia, Santa Monica, Washington, Long Beach, Stone Mountain, Hove, Hamburg, Dorking, and Louisville.

Giving It Away

Anyone who orders a kit from us at between now and midnight, Sunday, December 11th, gets a copy of a DVD containing our goofy short film Copy Goes Here free of charge. In case you didn't know, Jewelboxing is part of Coudal Partners in Chicago and this is our attempt at what the smart guys might call 'synergy.'

The disc also contains Scott Smith's movie Ten, in which a man violates all Ten Commandments before breakfast, plus Slowtron's How to BBQ a Man which is pretty self-explanatory, and Steve Delayhoyde's 238 Miles, an excrutiating drive from Iowa to Chicago listening to just one song, "Dancing Queen" by ABBA.

Make a bulk order this week and we'll toss in a stylish CGH tee shirt too. Write crew at jewelboxing dot com for information on that.

Since you're not paying for the movie, keep your smartypants comments about our acting abilities to yourself willya? And yes, regifting of the movie is encouraged.

Self-Promotion Via Other People

The old adage is, "Any press is good press." But if it's good press, then it stands to reason that said adage should be revised to fit. Something maybe along the lines of "Any press that's good is extra good press." That's what's happened here last week with a couple of articles that were floated our way. We got a nice blurb in Consumer Electronics, who said, "You can buy cheap plastic cases for your DVDs at any computer or electronics store, but if you want to get fancy, consider a kit from Jewelboxing." That was nice. Then Dawson found a full product review on a site called IT Enquirer.com, which said, "Jewelboxing offers a ready-to-go system, complete with the best quality jewelboxes on the market, inkjet paper perforated to match the jewelbox precisely and templates for your software." and another review on the Dutch site, Scribent Reviews, which said, well, as none of us speak the language, we're not sure what it says. But we're assuming it was pretty good, given that they gave Jewelboxing a rating of 10 out of a possible 10 (unless maybe we're reading it incorrectly and 1 is the best and 10 is the worst). So, yeah, we're definitely guilty of bragging here, but we're still proud of the system, and we're thrilled that people are so receptive to it that they're putting reviews out there. Also, if we ever decide to make a Jewelboxing movie, now we've got some good tags for the poster.

If any of the people in the following cities need a blurb to help them sell things, gain power and influence, or help them get their film, "Zombie Possums From Space," into mass distribution, we're here for you: Lewes, Phillipsburg, Bellvue, Memphis, Malibu, Brooklyn, Sarasota, New York, Lisboa, Madison, Warren, Denton, Santa Monica, London, Clinchy, Prince George, Sleepy Hollow, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Roswell, Mountain View, Markham, Guntersville, Philadelphia, Venice, West Hollywood, Montreal, Austin, North Wales, Santiago, Chicago, Toronto, Plantation, and Royal Tunbridge Wells.

What Are We Jewelboxing: Day Four

Well, it's been a good run, but we've finally reached the end of the week and that means the end of our "What Are We Jewelboxing?" series as well. After today, we'll get back to ideas about what to do with Jewelboxing and highlighting the terrific work that comes our way. And who knows, maybe we'll run into another week here at the studio where it seems like everyone is working on printing and packaging all at the same time and we can start it up all over again. But for now, here's the last, from Steve:

"Back in early July, I went out to a friend's wedding outside of Booneville, California, in the northern part of the state. The bride knew I was something of a film guy, so she asked me to shoot the wedding video. But she demanded that it be something unique and, preferably, funny and strange. She sent me two DVDs a few weeks before the wedding: 'The Five Obstructions' and 'Wirthnal and I', and said, 'I like these movies. Can you do something like this?' After watching them, basking in their weirdness, I knew this was the job for me. So I went out there, had a blast and shot the wedding like a typical wedding videographer. When I got back, I had the idea to edit it as something mildly-normal, but to incorporate a very unreliable narrator who was never sure what was going on or was clearly making things up. Here's the finished product. In addition to the video, I also wanted the packaging to be really something unique, so of course I used Jewelboxing. I designed the case by creating this facade that this was a disc from a company that specialized in making nothing but wedding videos for the couple, Brooke and Jeffrey. Here's what it said inside the cover flap:

'As a consumer, we know that you have countless choices among the other videos of this wedding currently available. You have, no doubt, obtained a copy of our product because you are aware that only this video has been authorized by both the bride and groom for national distribution. Our company was approached to create this product due to our long-standing relationship with their organization and the quality of our work in prior Brooke and Jeffrey weddings ("Brooke and Jeffrey's Wedding 1998" was the recipient of three Emmys). It is because of this valued relationship and our commitment to excellence within the Brooke and Jeffrey wedding video industry, that our audience receives a wedding video experience unlike any other. From the crisp, clean, high-resolution video images to the sparkling fidelity of the stereo mix, watching this, or any of the wide assortment of titles in our Brooke and Jeffrey series, gives one the sensation of attending their special celebrations, but without the expense and burden of travel. We hope you will enjoy this wedding video and return to us soon for more exciting Brooke and Jeffrey wedding video releases.'"

We're more than happy to shoot any and all of the many happy weddings sure to be occurring soon involving the very attractive people in New York, Atlanta, Dallas, Greenwood Village, Saint Louis, Prunedale, Glendale, San Francisco, Virginia Beach, Seattle, Ardmore, Cincinnati, Washington, Woodland Hills, Toronto, Chula Vista, Coral Gables and Lafayette.

What Are We Jewelboxing: Day Four

Well, it's been a good run, but we've finally reached the end of the week and that means the end of our "What Are We Jewelboxing?" series as well. After today, we'll get back to ideas about what to do with Jewelboxing and highlighting the terrific work that comes our way. And who knows, maybe we'll run into another week here at the studio where it seems like everyone is working on printing and packaging all at the same time and we can start it up all over again. But for now, here's the last, from Steve:

"Back in early July, I went out to a friend's wedding outside of Booneville, California, in the northern part of the state. The bride knew I was something of a film guy, so she asked me to shoot the wedding video. But she demanded that it be something unique and, preferably, funny and strange. She sent me two DVDs a few weeks before the wedding: 'The Five Obstructions' and 'Wirthnal and I', and said, 'I like these movies. Can you do something like this?' After watching them, basking in their weirdness, I knew this was the job for me. So I went out there, had a blast and shot the wedding like a typical wedding videographer. When I got back, I had the idea to edit it as something mildly-normal, but to incorporate a very unreliable narrator who was never sure what was going on or was clearly making things up. Here's the finished product. In addition to the video, I also wanted the packaging to be really something unique, so of course I used Jewelboxing. I designed the case by creating this facade that this was a disc from a company that specialized in making nothing but wedding videos for the couple, Brooke and Jeffrey. Here's what it said inside the cover flap:

'As a consumer, we know that you have countless choices among the other videos of this wedding currently available. You have, no doubt, obtained a copy of our product because you are aware that only this video has been authorized by both the bride and groom for national distribution. Our company was approached to create this product due to our long-standing relationship with their organization and the quality of our work in prior Brooke and Jeffrey weddings ("Brooke and Jeffrey's Wedding 1998" was the recipient of three Emmys). It is because of this valued relationship and our commitment to excellence within the Brooke and Jeffrey wedding video industry, that our audience receives a wedding video experience unlike any other. From the crisp, clean, high-resolution video images to the sparkling fidelity of the stereo mix, watching this, or any of the wide assortment of titles in our Brooke and Jeffrey series, gives one the sensation of attending their special celebrations, but without the expense and burden of travel. We hope you will enjoy this wedding video and return to us soon for more exciting Brooke and Jeffrey wedding video releases.'"

We're more than happy to shoot any and all of the many happy weddings sure to be occurring soon involving the very attractive people in New York, Atlanta, Dallas, Greenwood Village, Saint Louis, Prunedale, Glendale, San Francisco, Virginia Beach, Seattle, Ardmore, Cincinnati, Washington, Woodland Hills, Toronto, Chula Vista, Coral Gables and Lafayette.

What Are We Jewelboxing: Day Three

We've reached day three of our "What Are We Jewelboxing?" week and today's is terrific if we do say so ourselves. Unfortunately, although we'd really like to, we can't tell you anything about it. Here's the scoop, with self-censorship at all times:

"Every now and again, Coudal Partners gets contacted to help CENSORED major CENSORED. Recently, we got a call from CENSORED who asked us to CENSORED for a possible CENSORED, hopefully in the near future. We spent a few weeks thinking of CENSORED and came up with a really strong CENSORED that we thought they'd love. In addition to the CENSORED we also CENSORED and CENSORED. And when we were all finished with everything, we packaged it all together in a Jewelboxing case with a might nice, super simple and clean design by Dawson, and sent it off. With these things, we're never sure if our CENSORED will CENSORED, but here's to CENSORED!"

Apologies for having to keep quiet, but this was a hush-hush job. As reconciliation, we're certain they'd be more than happy to show you all the wonderful things they're making in Forest Hills, Phillipsburg, Marina Del Rey, Naples, New York, Washington, Roswell, Metuchen, Yonkers, Walworth, Santa Ana, Astoria, San Juan, Denver, Beaconsfield, Villette, and Portchester.

What Are We Jewelboxing: Day Two

Continuing with our weeklong series of the stuff we've been putting together using Jewelboxing here in the studio recently, today we're taking a look at a side project of Steve Delahoyde's:

"My good pal Wakiza and I have been making these weird little short films for years and, along with commercials and music videos and everything in between, we've amassed a huge collection of this stuff. A year or so back, we'd put together a DVD of everything we had, but it was in an ugly, standard case and we weren't entirely thrilled with it. So come back around to this past week, we were going to be a part of the popular Funny Ha-Ha series again here in Chicago, and I thought that it would provide the impetus to try building a collection again and see if anyone would buy such a thing. Unfortunately, I came up with the idea on Saturday and the event was on Wednesday night. So I had to alter my plan of attack. Instead, I put together a 'Best Of' DVD, with forty or so pieces on it. I animated some menus, picked material that had always worked well with large audiences, and took photos around the house to use in the packaging. I'd used Jewelboxing before, of course, but not a whole lot with my own material, and I've always been more of a writer than a designer. But once I had the first case together, I honestly was surprised at how good it looked. 'People might actually but this thing,' I thought. And it turns out, they did."

We know that people will come in droves to buy whatever they're selling in Toronto, the Bronx, Orlando, Austin, South Haven, Liverpool, London, Edison, Athens, Fairfax, Montague, Calgary, Minneapolis, New York, McLean, Rialto, Baldwin Harbor, Lakewood, Ellington, San Francisco, Joplin, Lynnwood, Okemos, Ottawa, Mississauga, Parma, Pacifica, Williams Lake, and Dublin.

What Are We Jewelboxing: Day Two

Continuing with our weeklong series of the stuff we've been putting together using Jewelboxing here in the studio recently, today we're taking a look at a side project of Steve Delahoyde's:

"My good pal Wakiza and I have been making these weird little short films for years and, along with commercials and music videos and everything in between, we've amassed a huge collection of this stuff. A year or so back, we'd put together a DVD of everything we had, but it was in an ugly, standard case and we weren't entirely thrilled with it. So come back around to this past week, we were going to be a part of the popular Funny Ha-Ha series again here in Chicago, and I thought that it would provide the impetus to try building a collection again and see if anyone would buy such a thing. Unfortunately, I came up with the idea on Saturday and the event was on Wednesday night. So I had to alter my plan of attack. Instead, I put together a 'Best Of' DVD, with forty or so pieces on it. I animated some menus, picked material that had always worked well with large audiences, and took photos around the house to use in the packaging. I'd used Jewelboxing before, of course, but not a whole lot with my own material, and I've always been more of a writer than a designer. But once I had the first case together, I honestly was surprised at how good it looked. 'People might actually but this thing,' I thought. And it turns out, they did."

We know that people will come in droves to buy whatever they're selling in Toronto, the Bronx, Orlando, Austin, South Haven, Liverpool, London, Edison, Athens, Fairfax, Montague, Calgary, Minneapolis, New York, McLean, Rialto, Baldwin Harbor, Lakewood, Ellington, San Francisco, Joplin, Lynnwood, Okemos, Ottawa, Mississauga, Parma, Pacifica, Williams Lake, and Dublin.

What Are We Jewelboxing: Day One

Last week it seemed like a lot of us here at the studio were working on our own projects that involved using Jewelboxing. There were a couple of weddings, a top secret Coudal project for a big client, and a little bit of self-promotion. If you'd stopped by at any point last week, you'd have most likely seen someone involved in either printing out templates, folding and tearing, or burning discs. And because of all this internal useage, we've decided to make this week a "What Are We Jewelboxing?" series. First up, Jake Walker and his wedding album:

"It's a little intimidating, working around a bunch of designers all day and taking on your own design project. When one of my best friends asked me to help with his wedding favors, though, I did just that.  Alex asked me to help him put together a wedding favor CD with some of his and his new bride's favorite songs, dedications, and songs from the wedding.  So I bought a hundred Standard cases, got the templates, and had at it.  Really, the project took less time than I thought it would, and the results were fantastic.  I printed everything out, and even took the advice of an earlier blog entry and put some rice in the gap between the CD tray and the edge of the case. Everyone at the wedding marveled at the gift. Occasionally, I was even acknowledged and given credit for all my hard work (and that's what it really was all about -- wasn't it?) So, if you're like me, have a friend who is getting married, and will otherwise have a hard time not getting at least some attention during the weekend, volunteer to handle their wedding favors and you're insecurities can stay on the shelf for another day."

There is not a single bit of insecurity to be found among those in Pekin, Allston, Madison, Plano, Los Angeles, Austin, Mesa, Sun Prairie, Rockwall, Pittsburgh, Orlando, Atlanta, Kitchener, South Barrington, Sicklerville, New York, Santa Monica, Broadstone, Waterford, Laguna Hills, and Oxnard.

What Are We Jewelboxing: Day One

Last week it seemed like a lot of us here at the studio were working on our own projects that involved using Jewelboxing. There were a couple of weddings, a top secret Coudal project for a big client, and a little bit of self-promotion. If you'd stopped by at any point last week, you'd have most likely seen someone involved in either printing out templates, folding and tearing, or burning discs. And because of all this internal useage, we've decided to make this week a "What Are We Jewelboxing?" series. First up, Jake Walker and his wedding album:

"It's a little intimidating, working around a bunch of designers all day and taking on your own design project. When one of my best friends asked me to help with his wedding favors, though, I did just that.  Alex asked me to help him put together a wedding favor CD with some of his and his new bride's favorite songs, dedications, and songs from the wedding.  So I bought a hundred Standard cases, got the templates, and had at it.  Really, the project took less time than I thought it would, and the results were fantastic.  I printed everything out, and even took the advice of an earlier blog entry and put some rice in the gap between the CD tray and the edge of the case. Everyone at the wedding marveled at the gift. Occasionally, I was even acknowledged and given credit for all my hard work (and that's what it really was all about -- wasn't it?) So, if you're like me, have a friend who is getting married, and will otherwise have a hard time not getting at least some attention during the weekend, volunteer to handle their wedding favors and you're insecurities can stay on the shelf for another day."

There is not a single bit of insecurity to be found among those in Pekin, Allston, Madison, Plano, Los Angeles, Austin, Mesa, Sun Prairie, Rockwall, Pittsburgh, Orlando, Atlanta, Kitchener, South Barrington, Sicklerville, New York, Santa Monica, Broadstone, Waterford, Laguna Hills, and Oxnard.

What Is He Doing?!

We get excited about gadgets but not just the latest cell-phone or Tivo or GPS system. We really dig mechanical gadgets, like that machine that counts twenties at the bank and our new Jewelboxing gadget, the Airplus machine. Oooooh.

Dawson was kind enough to demonstrate it and we brought in the Junior Jewelboxing Team (Grace, 6 and Spencer, 4 "And 3/4!") to evaluate the greatest thing since the Cotton Gin. Check out the results in this short video. [speakers on]

In the past, we'd been using that staple of the packaging and shipping industry: peanuts. Along with palates of boxes and big rolls of shrink and bubble wrap, every month we'd get in a huge batch of these eight foot tall bags of peanuts. We'd scoop them into each shipment that was headed out, piles and piles of them. And then when customers would receive them, they'd get their cases in safely, but they'd also have a mountain of these shipping peanuts to deal with. Yech. No more thankfully.

If there's a line to see the new Airplus machine, the first people we'll let in to see it will be from Miami, New York, Burbank, Duarte, Cincinnati, Washington, Colorado Springs, Phoenix, Chatsworth, London, Houston, Los Angeles, Delray Beach, Reno, Copenhagen, Richmond, Canton, and Bradford.

Aural Fixation

One of our new favorite people of all time, Chaz Windus of Blazing Lazer, has helped us out once again. Not only did he send in a series of amazing music tracks for us to help score the Jewelboxing commercial, he followed up by doing all of the sound design as well. What was once just a flashy little spot with cool music, is now a flashy little spot with cool music AND a cornucopia of wooshes and beeps. It really does breathe a whole new life into the whole thing. Check it out.

With this step, it seems like we’re nearing the end of this fun side project. However, we’ve come this far, we can’t just let the thing sit and waste away on this site, can we? Well, we may not have the media budget, but we’ve got something sneaky planned that’ll get this thing seen. Stick with us—more revealed soon.

We would be making boring animations about dirt and sticks, if it weren't for those in Wellington, Carmel, Minneapolis, Wien, Tallahassee, Yonkers, San Francisco, Atlanta, New York, Hudson, San Luis Obispo, Tucson, Goleta, Nesna, Philadelphia, Verdun and Troy.

Like A Glove

The saga continues on our quest to create a flashy commercial spot for Jewelboxing. A few days back, we put up a draft with some horribly mismatched soundtracks and asked any musically-inclined readers to submit better-fitting, better-sounding music for the spot. Immediately, we got in a batch of fantastic submissions, which ran the gamut from rhythmic ambient tracks to jittery electronic to torch songs. It was amazing to see how the spot would change in tone whenever we dropped in a different style.

In the end, we chose the entry by Chaz Windus at Blazing Lazer. Not only did the track fit incredibly well, it was exactly in the direction we were looking to go in. Something fun, upbeat, approachable, and with a wide variety of sounds. So impressed were we, we went back and altered the spot around to work with the frenzied track all the more. Take a look here.

Sound design is being worked on currently, and we're still fixing little things here and there whenever we get a free second, so everything's pressing on. Shortly, we'll be announcing another contest in search of a voice-over artist, so drink some tea, quit smoking, and polish up those pipes -- you'll need 'em.

We're working on a acapella cover of "Lovin' You" for those in Hollywood, Chicago, Tacoma, Manhattan, Silver Spring, Brookline, Encino, Hurleyville, Arcadia, Arlington, Lemoore, Albuquerque, Nederland, Eastlake, Pelham, Pasadena, Minneapolis, and Brooklyn.

Of note: The special offer we made in the CP/Jewelboxing Infrequent Mailing last week expires on Friday, so hurry it up already! If you don't know what we're talking about, sign up for the newsletter at the bottom of the JB Home Page.

Score Big, Score :30

Unless you're involved in production or the music industry, it's often very easy to let the importance of a good piece of accompanying music slip by. For composers everywhere, the humble truth of the matter is that this blending in means your work has been successful. It's when a track doesn't work when the audience starts to really take notice.

We bring this music talk up for a reason. See, for the past couple of months, whenever we'd have a second or two, we've been working on this simple animated commercial for Jewelboxing to be used in the product samples we send out, for web promotion, and whatever else we see fit. Now that we're nearing the end of the visual process, we're at the point when we're starting to think about scoring and sound effects. We like that part, but there's a lot of room for error, such as with these:

Music Test #1

Music Test #2

Music Test #3

Music Test #4

Those bits of audio-visual travesty behind us, we thought it might be fun to open up the whole audio end to the outside world, to see if anyone with some terrific musical ability might be willing to compose something for us, for this little Jewelboxing spot. We'd exchange music for product, of course, but also keep in mind that the samples we send out go to some of the best and biggest ad firms, directors, production groups, record labels, etc. That's some nice exposure.

If you think you're up to the task, download this Quicktime draft of the animation and see what you can do with it. When you're finished up, send along an mp3 of your work to steve at jewelboxing dot com. We'll give you until May 15th. Oh and by the way, unless you're Thom Yorke, there's really no reason to send us a note about how cool it would be for us to use a Radiohead song in the mix.

Next week: Voiceovers.

Powerpointing

To state the obvious: presentation is an essential part making a convincing statement. But take this little imaginary situation to heart and think how often it happens: You've got the expensive suit on, you've practiced a pitch, and you've either spent a lot of time in front of Powerpoint making your own presentation (complete with sound effects!) or you've outsourced it to a presentation pro. You're about as ready as you possibly could be to have the client eating out of your hand.

So you go to load up your presentation and what do you have the disc packaged in? An ugly little paper sleeve, or one of those impossibly bland hard cases. Sure, it isn't everything, but suppose you gave that disc to the group you're presenting to. People aren't going to pick it up later and say, "Hey, this looks cool. What is this?" They do that with Jewelboxing. We know -- people tell us.

On the other side, suppose you're a Powerpoint designer, sending these kinds of presentations off to people in similar situations. You're presenting the presentation business -- that's doubling the pressure to look good! Either way, just seems like a gimmie to us. Do the whole presentation right, from start to finish, with every detail perfected, and your pitch couldn't be more solid. But, of course, we're a little biased (we use Jewelboxing in all our pitches).

Right this minute, we're working on a presentation entitled, "We Really Like the People in Valencia, San Diego, Cranford, Athens, Austin, Hillsborough, Tervuren, Bridgeview, Buffalo, Conifer, Tempe, St. Albans, Oxford, Valparaiso, Berkeley, Santa Monica, and New York."

Polishing the Jewels

Here's a quick message letting you know that it would be wise to check in with Jewelboxing later this week. If you thought the system was good before, you're going to love it all the more now.

We also believe there to be a constant increase in goodness in Reno, East Meadow, Remscheid, Mosman, Ewing, San Rafael, Hillsborough, Newbury Park, Menlo Park, Los Angeles, Cambridge, Bend, New York, Leicester, Glenview, San Diego, and Santa Monica.

Chuck Darwin, Media Maven

We're re-running this post because we're putting together our Q105 media planning and could use some suggestions.

Here's some details about the next phase of Jewelboxing. At Coudal Partners, we are frequently in a position to recommend various advertising vehicles and outlets to our clients. To do this we research as many possibilities as time and budget will allow. Next, we generally contact each one that seems like a good fit, lay out the basics of our program and ask them for costs and ideas. In essence, we ask them to pitch us specifically on why Magazine X or Radio Station Y should be included in the buy. After that we draft a plan and present it to the client, adjust accordingly and go ahead.

We're doing a similar thing here. We're contacting a fairly large number of online sites whose audiences would seem to intersect with ours and are asking them if they'd be willing to run a pilot program for us in December and/or January. The program would be purchased and we'll leave it mostly up to the sites to construct and organize the placement specifics. We've set a maximum dollar amount for each pilot and if a site feels that this amount is too low we're putting them on a "maybe later" shelf. If they do agree, we will be evaluating traffic and purchases that come from that site with an eye towards expanding our commitment with those who perform best. The real-time nature and easy tracking of online advertising allows us to be Darwinian in our approach. We'll build a roster of partners based on performance and may or may not get back to the "maybe later" shelf as things progress.

If you run or know of a place on the web where people who might be interested in Jewelboxing congregate, send a note to jim at jewelboxing dot com and we'll take a look. On a side note, you'd be surprised at how many sites who profess to be actively looking for advertising and sponsorship don't respond to email inquiries promptly. You'd be even more surprised at some of the ones who don't respond at all. Really, you would. We're building another shelf for them. It's the "probably never" shelf.

The fittest have survived in Savannah, Toronto, Marietta, Phoenix, Edmond, London, Cleveland, NYC, Miami, Hendersonville and San Diego.

Nice When We Get One Like This

Carl Acampado writes, "As a fellow designer (in training...a couple more years), let me say you have an excellent product. Last year, I created some custom CD's, and besides the burning of the discs, I spent the most time finding appropriate cases, and then creating insert, booklet, and label templates in Illustrator. It was a pain in the ass, and actually hindered my design, because I spent so much time trying to get the inserts just right. I'm so glad I found your site, for you've solved two problems that I had: you have a superior case, and you've done the Illustrator dirty work for me, so I can concentrate on content."

Cities in our heart. Bozeman, Rochester, Bellevue, NYC, LA, Bellingham, Asheville, Round Rock, Arlington, Culver City, Parker, Atlanta, Summit, Beverly Hills, Athens, San Francisco, London, Newmarket, Rockland and Brooklyn.

They Call Me the Seeker…

Headcoats off! (Remove your Deerstalker.) We have some winners in the Jewelboxing/Coudal Fresh Signals Archives Scavenger Hunt Or Whatever We've Been Calling It. Competition was fierce, per usual, and the questions were as difficult and cryptic as ever, but four diligent snoopers waded through our mess of an archive to correctly solve all eight of our brain-scratchers.

Following a few blatantly wrong and funny entries (probably a cry for attention, or a Jewelboxing discount, or both) the first two winners came early. They were followed by a flurry of entries with one or two incorrect answers, then a day or so without an entry, then another flurry of entries with one or two incorrect answers. Then there were some shenanigans, and we bent the rules a bit and closed entries. The winners, and their stories:

First Prize (100pack Kings) goes to Shawn Kelley, who mailed in his correct answers about an hour after we emailed the questions. Sean won another of our contests recently, which forces us to announce a "Shawn Kelley Rule" for future contests (Coudal/Jewelboxing contest winners are heretofore ineligible to win other Coudal/Jewelboxing contests). But we appreciate your selfless dedication to Jewelboxing, Shawn, and your detailed explanation of your answers which we shall pillage below.

Second Prize (40pack Kings) goes to another Sean, albeit one preferring the gaelic spelling. We speak, of course, of Sean Sheridan, a night-owl who e-mailed his entry shortly after midnight the first day.

Third Prize (20pack Kings) was a tie. Jamie McCarthy got her entry in early, but alas, missed #7. A couple days later, she realized her mistake and corrected herself, just as Robyn Paton sent in her entry. Robyn also got one question wrong, (#4) but her masterful Jewelboxing-suck-up incorrect answer (below) convinced us she deserved to share the third prize with Jamie. Since we don't make a 10-pack, they'll each get a 20-pack.

Enough already, Our questions, Shawn's answers, (and the original Fresh Signals entries where they were found).

We once cited three fictional recording artists in a Fresh Signals entry. Which one, as it turns out, is real?
Middle Earth. (Behold the Rocklopedia Fakebandica. -04.05.02.bb)

If you're going to add a red tube-top and cowboy boots to a famous naked image of classical beauty, you should add them to a painting by whom?
Ingres. (Famous nudes, now clothed, at Worth1000. -05.27.04.jc)

One day Bryan and a pal built a mini-version of an arena-rock lighting effect for fun. What band had three songs on the playlist the guys used to put this effect in motion?
Led Zeppelin (Our homemade Laser Light Show. -07.27.04.bb)

What is the best paper for printing your curriculum vitae?
100% Cotton Fiber 32 lb. Ivory Premium Bond Paper (Non-Expert advice on writing your resumé. -08.22.03.kg)

Note: Robyn's answer: "This is a toss up. It could be any of the marvelous stationers… you've featured in Fresh Signals over the years, but really, if you want to get the job, I'd do the whole application (CV and prettiness, plus a little but of hip thrown in for good measure) with the Jewelboxing system, so the printing, of course, would be on your lovely inserts." Then she cited the Fresh Signals post about us hiring Ryan because he sent his resume in a Jewelboxing case).

Chicagoans love their meat and when we order lunch here at the studio, you can bet that it will contain plenty of beef and meatballs. For lunch orders weighing in at more than 25lbs, CP's fave lunch spot charges us how much extra for the hefty delivery?
$5 (Office fave Bari. -05.23.02.kg)

What should Phillip tell the people whose design talent he fears?
That he forgot the url. (Phillip has a slight problem with Jewelboxing. -06.07.04.cp)

Dave and Bryan had an ongoing obsession with a low-budget movie (neither of us have seen it, still) about the hunt for a fictional synthesizer. What was the name of the synthesizer?
MoleTron. (Weird trailer for new indie film Southlander. -02.21.01.dr)

Name the two Finnish shops that had their windows redesigned as part of a design workshop.
Cafe Visual and Maustemesta spiceshop. ("Re-design the lettering so that the shop would sell more. -10.18.02.jc)

Well done, all, and several of you were just one question away from winning, so pat yourselves on the back. No, really, do it. We're not going anywhere until you literally and physically pat yourselves on the back. There, was that so hard? Thank you. If you weren't hip to this contest, it's because you didn't join our Infrequent Mailing list, sign up on the front page of Jewelboxing or Coudal today! Please don't forget that the Fresh Signals archives are always open for your browsing pleasure.

We have lots of cities to be thankful for today. Here's a few of them. St. Louis, Seattle, Mount Airy, Culver City, Chicago, Lafayette Hill, Dallas, Kirkwood, Puyallup, LA, Brooklyn, Playa Del Rey, San Francisco, San Luis Obispo, NYC, Worcester, Toronto, Delmar, Newburgh, Vancouver, Victoria and Mexico City.

The Sweet Fruits of Capitalism

Occasionally we discover cool things about creating and running an online business that we could never have anticipated. We knew it would be fun to provide people with the tools to make cool stuff and that it would be interesting to watch the word get around and to ship to a zillion places and to have the business become an increasingly important part of what Coudal Partners is all about. We knew, most of all, that we'd learn about a lot of things. All that is good.

But nobody ever told us that when we ordered a certain amount of packing materials from our supplier they would send us, FREE OF CHARGE, a totally-cool super-patriotic hardhat that we could make our intern Ryan wear while sitting in a big plastic trash can. Ah, the sweet fruits of capitalism.

Thanks Nashville, Cincinnati, Portland, Duluth, Succasunna, Worcester, Seattle, Beverly Hills, Carbondale, Palo Alto, Fremont, Grand Rapids, Danvers, NYC, Quebec, Minneapolis, Calgary, Duluth, Geelong West and Toronto for making all this possible.

Bits and Pieces

The workshop at How to Build a Professional Database-Driven Website is taught by the developers behind Newstoday, K10K, BD4D and FlightDeck. It looks great and the Jewelboxing packaged giveaway does too. We're happy to be an inaugural sponsor of Stylegala, a sweet new reference for web developers. Plus, Ben Hunt places the JB site about halfway between 'functional richness' and 'aesthetic richness' in his book excerpt posted at Web Design from Scratch. That's a nice place to be.

A CP/Jewelboxing Infrequent Mailing went out yesterday and included a contest in which people could win a 100pack. Subscribe on the JB home page so you don't miss the next one.

We've always found aesthetic richness in Brooklyn, Austin, Virginia Beach, Libertyville, Jacksonville, Orangeburg, NYC, Vancouver, Portland, London, Orangeburg, New Bern, Nazareth, Newport Beach, Savannah, chicago, Louisville, Indianapolis, Trondheim, Arlington, Toronto and Northumberland.

Roll Over and Play

Ant made a really sweet little ad for our Newstoday sponsorship. He used iStopMotion from Boinx, Flash, Photoshop and the desk in my office. Here it is.

If you're on our mailing list, watch your inbox in the next day or two for a chance to win a 20pack or other prizes in an experimental contest celebrating Jewelboxing's first birthday. if you're not on the list, get to it. Just enter your email at the bottom of the home page.

Everyone in these cities is already a winner as far as we're concerned. Lubbock, Portland, Vancouver, Jonesboro, Brooklyn, Northfield, Sparta, North Brookfield, Karlshamn, Jackson, Virginia Beach, Chicago, Portsmouth, Frisco, Niwot, Kingsport, Troy, Shawnee, Brookline, NYC, Philadelphia, Austin, Sonoma and Winston Salem.

Danke

I'm going to be out of town for a couple days and have already fallen woefully behind in listing the places where we find nice people using our nice product, so here's a list. Also, if you'd rather win a Jewelboxing system than buy one, you'd better add your name to our mailing list. (see the bottom of the home page) we'll be sending out a CP/Jewelboxing Infrequent Mailing next week and there will be a new contest in it, along with some other semi-interesting things.

Thnaks to Kaleva, Alviso, NYC, Williamsville, Sydney, Minneapolis, Franklin, Atlanta, Crystal Lake, Toronto, Billings, Columbus, Bloomfield, Vancouver, Burbank, Rumson, Scarborough, Pittsford, Largo, Remscheid, LA, Tokyo, Sumter, Rocky Hill, New Haven, Pittsburgh, Plano, Winter Park, Victoria, Santa Monica, Boca Raton, Milpitas, Norman, Baldwin Harbor and Grand Rapids.

Stop Motion Fun at the Studio

One if the advantages of running your own business is that if you have a half-baked idea that could turn out interesting (and maybe even effective) you can pursue it. Ant and I spent the better part of this afternoon at CP screwing around with a cool Mac app called iStopMotion from Boinx. We're working on a little advertising project for a specific site sponsorship we've undertaken. This is the very raw footage of what we're messing with, we hope to have the finished project completed and launched tomorrow. Unless of course it turns out lame. Then we'll never speak of it again.

With all precincts reporting we are able to call a vicory for Jewelboxing in Thornhill, West Bend, Zuid Holland, NYC, Emeryville, Brisbane, Milwaukee, Chicago, Sydney, Singapore, Brookline, Sunnyvale, Rancho Santa Margarita, Lubbock, North Bay Village, Harrisonburg and San Diego.

Crash Ballet

When we came across NASA Crash Impact Demonstrations for a post at CP we thought they were oddly beautiful, especially in light of the fact that these crashes were staged for research. OK, just for fun, we started a contest. We've quickly matched a couple of these crash clips with a piece of music from Plone's excellent For Beginner Piano.

Here's our clip. Who's next?

Pick your own music, fire up Final Cut Pro and send us a link (info at coudal dot com) to your clip. We'll give away a Jewelboxing 20pack if we see something exceptional before tomorrow morning end of the day Thursday. By the way, there are bigger source files at the NASA site for each of the clips listed.

Big ups to to NYC, Wien, Abbeville, Bath, Flintridge, Laval, Morris Plains, San Francisco, Chicago, West Hollywood, Sammamish and Ottawa.

Going to the Chapel

The PayPal problems from earlier in the week are a fading, distant memory except for that big, ugly zero in the sales column for Monday. To all who wrote and called and eventually got their orders through, thanks for your patience. Things seems back to normal now.

Scott Madore has found our Jewelboxing system perfect for a wedding video project he just completed. Lots of other people are using them to archive photos, music and video from big family events. If that's how you're using them, drop us a note and picture. We'd love to see how they came out. If you're in Chicago's southwest suburbs and don't want to do all the work yourself, Valarie and company at Reel Life, a new shop in Indian Head Park, can handle the entire project, including packing your final product with Jewelboxing.

Let's raise a toast to Bolton, Chicago, Orangeburg, LA, Chantilly and Granada Hills.

Grrrr

Yesterday was a complete bust due to problems with PayPal's order processing system. They hope to have things back to normal soon but if you can't get through and need something quickly, please write us at crew at jewelboxing dot com or call us at the CP Studio at 312 243 1107.

Meanwhile, since we're not too busy processing orders, we'll catch up on thanking people who ordered in the good ol' days, like last week. We appreciate the support from NYC, Brooklyn, Herriman, Detroit, Boca Raton, Hammond, Keswick, Guelph, Toronto and North Chatham.

Monday Monday

Guess we must have jinxed ourselves with that last post as PayPal is having all kinds of trouble today. Sorry if you're not able to order. Please call or write us at the CP studio if you need something right away. Hopefully the PP system will be back up shortly.

Check this informative thread on creating custom disc cases going on at Yayhooray.

Josh Rubin's Cool Hunting says Jewelboxing is for "those of us who care to put a little more love in the package." Amen to that.

And Amen to Richmond, Astoria, Boynton Beach, Santa Monica, NYC, LA, Dorval, Pittsford, Warwickshire, Thessaloniki, Chicago, Woodbury, Philadelphia, Norwalk, West Hollywood and Seattle.

When Matt Stays Up Late He Realizes He's Lazy

Do I have to join Paypal to make a Jewelboxing purchase? Why do you use PayPal as your transactional partner? Shouldn't you have rolled your own system to handle online payment?

Let me answer the first question. No. You can do a plain 'ol credit card transaction, easy as pie.

Danke München, DC, San Juan, Toronto, San Francisco, Auckland, Richmond Hill, Helsinki, Minneapolis, Key Biscayne, Hamburg, Mount Juliet, Tarzana, Brooklyn, Waikato, Austin, Winnipeg and Menlo Park. Vielen Dank.

The Citizen Kane of Trailers About Fictional Movies About Advertising

Don't you just hate it when one smartypants is always getting the answers right in class? Well Mr. Claymore has won at Ad-Land again. This time it was our Coming Adtractions movie trailer writing contest. Here's his entry.

Got an idea for a contest or promotion, drop us a line. Like the fine foilks in North Hollywood, Portland, Kernersville, Santa Monica, San Francisco, Somerville, Hawthorne, Zionsville, Potsdam, Richardson, Cambridge, Anaheim, Villette and Allston did recently.

Various and Sundry

The Jewelboxing/Adland contest, Coming Adtractions continues. As does our sponsorship of the not-as-disturbing-as-you-might-think How to BBQ a Man. We've shipped our first order to Kosovo and also one to Fiji bringing the United Nations of Jewelboxing up to 31 and we're preparing a bunch of new stuff for the Examples and Inspirations section and working on a BIG HUGE contest for later this fall. More on that soon.

High-fives all around to Dallas, Housatonic, Des Moines, West Palm Beach, Edmonton, Chicago, Santa Barbara, DC, Copenhagen, Barcelona, Norwich, Mississippi State and LA.

BTW: We have also just started a new company, called Lowercase Tee.

H.S.O.T

I expect we're not the first online retailers to keep track of orders by day and constantly evaluate how we're doing against previous weeks and time periods. We've been chugging right along lately with real identifiable patterns developing and, by and large, things going along in a sensible way. Until today. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD if you're going to order Jewelboxing soon please do it before midnight tonight and Help Save Our Tuesday.

Today could be the worst sales Tuesday since the very first weeks we were open. There's no explanation really. The last few weeks have been among our best ever. Yesterday was strong. Traffic is above average. PayPal is working fine. Please, just a 40pack here and there can make all the difference.

Editors Note: Never mind.

Thanks to Burlington, Huntington Station, Columbia, Salt Lake City, Surrey, Daly City, Utrecht, Venlo, Brooklyn, Chicago, Santa Monica, NYC, Burbank, LA, Atlanta, Edina and Chagrin Falls.

Also, in response to Ollie, who asks? "So tell me Jim, what exactly comes included in the Jewelboxing system?"

In a World...

Starting today, a new Jewelboxing/Adland contest, Coming Adtractions, asks you to write a voice-over for a movie trailer about the advertising business. The winner will receive a 20pack and the admiration of his or her peers.

The movies will not actually be coming to a theater near you in Victoria, Ipswich, Wilmette, Minneapolis, Duncan, Loveland, Alexandria, San Francisco, Dallas, Chicago, Seattle, Münster, Kanata or Pasadena.

Five Seems Ideal to Jason

Jason, who's email address places him at a marketing firm in Ohio, has won a Jewelboxing 20pack. We picked his name out of a virtual hat full of people who were kind enough to tell us how many of their relatives they actually like in reference to a new JB product we're developing. We'll leave it up to Jason to tell his family which five he was referring to.

If we had relatives in Lincoln, LA, West Lafayette, Seattle, Surrey, Portland, Savannah, Waikato, Chicago, Redondo Beach, London, San Gabriel or Newark, we'd probably like them fine, except for that really tall aunt who smells like onions.

We're sponsoring the presentation of How to BBQ a Man an excellent short film from Slowtron as it was their fine work that got us into this Jewelboxing mess to begin with. "Celebrate the times. Oh, the times."

How Many Relatives Do You Really Like? Part Two

Yesterday we asked for some opinions about a new system we'll be offering and we received a ton of responses, none were better than this one from Russell.

Hmmmm. I like a lot of the dead ones and I’d probably press some flowers in the jewel boxes and leave them at their graves, but I am a bastard and never visit the cemeteries. Christ, I couldn’t even find them without calling my dad for directions and that would be pretty tacky. I like 5 or 6 of the live ones. However some still can’t understand the concept of the ‘dimmer switch’, so they aren’t getting any ultra-modern new fangled doohickeys that might scare their cats. I’d say 2 might benefit from a jewel boxed photo album. Yes, 2. And I have about 30 relatives that are not that far removed. I just don’t dig them.

We like a surprisingly large percentage of the folks in Indianapolis, Leonia, Mountain View, Altadena, DC, San Francisco, Jacksonville, Ocean, Atlanta, Edmonton, Nashville, Miami, LA and Vancouver.

How Many Relatives Do You Really Like?

If we were going to offer a smaller kit for people who wanted to make family photo or video archives for the holidays, what would be the optimum number of cases to include? Ten? Five? Three? Write us with your opinion and we'll choose a random responder and send them a 20pack free of charge.

Basically we're going to make it super simple for folks who don't have familiarity with or access to professional design applications to create a great-looking package. The last piece of the puzzle is figuring out the right basic system size and price. For me, five or six seems right. I'd make a couple for my own use and one each for the grandparents and one or two more for the kids' aunts and uncles. A package like that would sure blow away that goofy photo-print with the wreath on the left and the kids all bundled up in red sweaters on the right.

If you live and work in Fort Worth, Johnson City, Scarbrough, Madison, LA, La Verne, Santa Monica, Edmond, Harrisonburg, London, NYC, Menifee, Potomac, Auckland, Berlin, St. Paul, Athens, Tamarac, Bellevue, Hudson, Tooele, North Hollywood, Stow, Ashford, Riverdale, Key Biscayne, Bassendean, Plano, Springville, Chicago or Forest Hills, consider yourself warned. Your competition is now armed with the Jewelboxing system and their presentations are much more lethal. Your only response is to close the 'disc-packaging gap' by matching their now-awesome power with a Jewelboxing system of your own.

Places in the Heart

Bob Phillips won the Photoforums 'Summer Fun' contest and a Jewelboxing 40pack with this shot from Fort Myers. There's a new contest up at PF now so get snapping.

Off on a road trip with the family in a couple days so I better make a serious effort to catch up on our list of cities where "the smart people live." Here goes nothing. Santa Monica, Hamburg, Dubai, Babylon, Sebastopol, Somerset, Provo, Compton, Olathe, Portland, North Yorkshire, Virginia Beach, Glendale, Orlando, Chicago, Raleigh, North Canton, Rochester, Brookeville, Philadelphia, Bountiful, Roseville, Eureka, NYC, San Francisco, Austin, Napa, Minneapolis, Penticton, Rockwall, Brooklyn, Seattle, Athens, Alexandria, Dallas, Pacific Palisades and Fresno.

Freedom Not To Sell

Maybe I shouldn't share this but it could be helpful to someone else creating a start-up business online, so here goes. We have had exactly six requests for refunds out of the thousands of orders we've filled in the past few months.

One was because the system "just wasn't what I expected."

One was because the project the system was ordered for was canceled.

One was because our paper did not work with a specific print-shop's sheet-fed press and by the time we offered to send more paper free of charge, the deadline for delivering the final project had passed.

One was because a student was putting together a resume reel and between the time she ordered and took delivery she found a job.

Two were because the packages were completely mangled on their way to Europe.

Those are the breaks and we're sorry things didn't work out, but we were happy to refund those customers. Then we had one last week. No matter what we did we couldn't make this customer happy. Our policies and our customer support which had been praised and appreciated by hundreds of people who had ordered exactly the same thing, were not good enough. Ultimately, this person wanted us to completely change they way we run our business and reconfigure our product specifically for his needs. We tried, but when he became rude in emails and on the phone I simply hit the refund button, leaving him and his complaints in the rear-view mirror. Wow, did that ever feel good. With one click we were completely free of any obligation to deal with this guy whatsoever. The lesson here is that as a retailer you need to remember that you're always free not to sell your product to someone and surprisingly, that can occasionally be a real good decision.

We'll do our damndest to make sure the nice folks in Chicago, Berkeley, Thessaloniki, Santa Fe, Twickenham, Mascoutah, Phoenix, Albuquerque, Helsinki, Alhambra, Brantford, Portland, Oak Park, Gilbert, Atlanta and Brooklyn get the most out of their Jewelboxing purchase.

Make Up Your Own Bad Headline Playing Off the Phrase "You've Got Mail."

We have lots of ways to track where our customers come from. Some are scientific and some not so much. The majority of our site visitors come from links on blogs and in forums. The second biggest chunk come from ads we've placed in a variety of places and from contests and promotions we created or sponsored. Search results come third but we've seen a big spike in those since AOL dropped a load of promotional direct-mail discs on North America that were packaged using the Super Jewel Box King.

A number of people have told us they received the case. Loved it. Found the SJB logo. Googled it. And there we were. Bingo.

We sincerely hope this promotion been helpful to AOL and we'd like to suggest that they continue ther progarm aggressively. It just goes to show that if you work hard, it doesn't always matter. Sometimes being a little lucky is better. We're also lucky to have new friends in Provo, Marina del Rey, Benbrook, NYC, Crystal Lake and Brooklyn.

We Have Winnahs

The Big Smoker's In12 contest winners have been announced. And the people who called themselves a contemporary art co and ""used six songs we'd never heard of by people we'd never heard of for the first leg of the journey and then just repeated those same six songs for the second leg didn't win. Congrats to Ian Pointer of Bicester, UK and Allison Bloom of Madison, Wisconsin who did.

The idea was to put together a songlist that got the listener from London to Chicago. Here's how we did it with a song of thanks. London, Vancouver, Rockwall, Framingham, Toronto, Columbus, Oslo, Trenton, Lithia Springs, Calgary, Orange and Chicago.

Enter and Enter and Enter to Win

Worth 1000 Jewelboxing Photoshop Contest. "Your task is to think up a fake music album or movie and create a cover for it."

Don't break the chain. the ever-popular Trivia Chain is rolling along at Ad-Land. Answer a question about advertising with a question about advertising and win.

$2500 and More is taking submissions at Threadless. The Jewelboxing part of the prize package pales in comparison to the loot but anyway..

Ryan Schroeder won a Jewelboxing 20pack from Daring Fireball's membership drive. The Big Smoker's In12 contest winner will to be announced soon.

You can still enter the Challenge at Photoforums to win a Jewelboxing system and will soon be able to enter a very funny contest at Slatch. Plus we have a huge contest idea for later in the summer with a really sweet prize but we don't have it all figured out yet so we wan't say anything more about it. Yet.

To everyone in River Falls, Metairie, Lilburn, Lund, Westfield, NYC, Pittsburgh, LA, Portland, Gatwick, Groningen, Mt. Laurel, Wagga Wagga, Halifax, Portland, Staten Island and Chicago, you're all winners in our book.

It Takes All Kinds

We don't know what every customer is doing with his/her Jewelboxing system. We've asked a few and checked the sites of others and here's a partial list of who's buying and for what.

College Video Yearbooks. Student Portfolios. Kid Party Gifts. Animators. Churches. Tasteful Nude Photographers. Not-So-Tasteful Nude Photographers. Film Companies. Wedding Photos. Software Applications. Goth Heavy Metal Band Demos. Christian Heavy Metal Band Demos. Charity Appeals. Interactive Annual Reports. Directors. DPs. Food Stylists. Gaffers. Stuntmen. Totally Amazing Digital Effects Companies named Eyeball. Linux Distros. Guys With Girlfriends. Guys Working on Getting Girlfriends. Guys With No Hope of Ever Having Girlfriends. Girls With Girlfriends. Architects. Landscape Architects. Usabilty Architects. Elvis Impersonators (Never Standards, Always Kings). Astronomers. A Really Big, Really Cool Hollywood Movie Company Who We'd Like to Name But Better Not. Jason, Brendan, Brian and Me.

We're sure there are more. If you're using Jewelboxing for something you'd like the world to see, email us at crew at jewelboxing dot com and perhaps we'll feature it on our Examples and Inspirations page. Thanks for using our systems in Centreville, Cincinnati, Sandy, Philadelphia, Toledo, Lincoln, Cambridge, Easthampton, Issy les Moulineaux, Chicago, Yardley and NYC. (Image swiped from here.)

Making Movies is Hard

You gotta get funded, deal with anxious writers, goofball actors and knuckleheaded studio employees. At the end of the process, what are you left with? More than likely an hour and change of footage you're not really proud of.

On the other hand, making promo materials for a movie is easy. Just think of a high-concept, give it a title and do a couple layouts. No stress. No ulcer. No nothing, but the satisfaction of letting others see your work. Watch Worth 1000 this week for a chance to design the DVD release of your great-unmade movie project and you might win a Jewelboxing system.

I'd like to thank the Academy and my Mom and Dad and of course my agent for sticking by me and London, Hollywood, Calgary, Las Vegas, Toronto, Oklahoma City, Hagerstown, Tampa, LA, NYC, Meraux and Austin too.

Done With That Big Thing

Sorry to be so slow to update. We've been a touch preoccupied the last week or so with a major redesign of our studio site. But not not too busy to try to mind our social graces with thank you notes going out to Philadelphia, Oceanside, Oakland, Kennesaw, Chicago, Framingham, West Des Moines, Duluth, Leeds, Lansdowne, Angwin and Northampton.

Only a couple days left to enter the In12 contest at The BIg Smoker. Get on it.

Armed and Dangerous

For those of you keen on lists of cities, here's an attempt to begin catch up on our roll-call of appreciation. If you're in one of these places and you haven't bought a Jewelboxing system yet, consider yourself warned. The competition might have a new, aerodynamic, polystyrene arrow in their quiver. Beaverton, Las Vegas, Isleworth, Miami, Siloam Springs, Franklin Park, Chicago, Sparta, Kendal, Boston, Overland Park, Dayton, Toronto, Pittsburgh, Santa Monica, Bonita Springs, Newport Beach, NYC, Lancaster, LA, Austerlitz, Tacoma, Kennesaw and Middleboro.

Music To Our Eyes

We've got a bit of a backlog of projects to be added to our Examples + Inspirations section and we're going to try to get those up this week. Music, film and photography showreels lead the way. Contests continue at the The Big Smoker and at PhotoForums if you'd rather win than buy and finally, we've been amazed at the number of people buying the "New Standards" for music demos. If you're an independent musician, or hang around with one, and you have an idea for a promotion to introduce Jewelboxing to people in that field drop us a line. We'll try just about anything once.

A tip o' the collective cap to Villette, Barrie, Woodstock, San Francisco, Arden and Enfield.

Massive Cover Up Exposed

The other day I followed a link to a Photoshop competition at Worth1000. The challenge was to clothe famous nudes. A funny idea, but perhaps not earth-shatteringly so. However, when I got there, I was blown away by the technical skill and imagination displayed in the entries. Since our first (and pretty much only) rule for marketing Jewelboxing is to try and find ways to reach people like ourselves, we've decided to sponsor Worth1000 for June. So clean your brushes because there will be some chances to win a few 20packs during the month.

Classical beauty can frequently be found in Singapore, London, LA, Lindenhurst, Kennesaw, Pittsburgh, Boston, Providence, Centannial, Newport Beach, NYC and Hoboken.

Making a Salami and Swiss Cheese Sandwich or Using Our New 2-Disc Hub

Starting right this very minute (well actually a couple days ago) all of our King (movie-sized) cases come equipped with a new two disc-holding hub. Read the last entry of our Frequently Asked Questions for more on the basics of the mechanism involved. Now the hub holds two discs, with one floating snugly and held in place above the other so they don't touch. If you use only one disc, you'll never notice the difference. Nice huh? Check this little video we made this morning (right before lunch) demonstrating exactly how it works.

The Spring Jewelboxing Tour continues apace. Venues include Aertesia, Alpharetta, Rockwall, Kingsley, St. Louis, Austerlitz, Buffalo. Pleasantville, Santa Monica, Boston, London and Tacoma.

Our Appointed Rounds

We uploaded all the information about our New Standards to the site at 3:45 Monday afternoon and at 3:53, Brian from Newport Beach made the first 'official' purchase of a 60pack. I wrote him to thank him for being first in line and asked him how he happened to place the order at almost the exact moment the product became available. He said. "...awesome! I was just sitting thinking 'Hey, I wonder if they've released those things yet.' And then boom! There they were."

Turns out Brian is a previous customer too as his next mail included this pix and note. "I think I promised you some pics of my jb's in action. Here's a couple shot against a recently destroyed bathtub. My site isn't ready yet, so I have no self-promotional linkage, just a picture of an awesome package with a decent product inside."

One of the next orders for Standards was from Jan in Lindigo Sweden. I asked him how he found us. He answered, "Just the usual search engine madness. I was looking for something completely different and landed on a weblog that had an entry on your product. So I went to your site and found out in your weblog that you would start offering music size jewelboxes. So I kept coming back once in a while until they were available." I guess maybe this blogging for business concept has some validity.

They're setting new standards for their presentations in Santa Monica, Middleboro, Gardena, Kaysville, Houston and LA.

And New Champion...

Our second product is now available. The New Standard is a music-sized version of the Super Jewel Box and it comes in 30, 60 and 150packs with everything you need to produce great-looking band demos, mix tapes or whatever. Go to BestBuy and purchase any old music CD. Spend half an hour unpacking it and then lay it down on the kitchen table. Take one of ours and place it right next to it. The Jewelboxing Standard will kick its ass all over the place. It's a stronger, cleaner, better designed, more durable product. And once you're done with the layout, no doubt it'll be better-looking too.

In other news, we've refined our fulfillment and shipping procedures and have been able to reduce costs to many places. Most notably, our biggest packages, the 100pack of Kings and the 150pack of Standards are now priced at $195 instead of the the previous $220. You can save fifty bucks when you order those. Plus, we've got a couple cool collaborative contests ready to go for the Standards and we'll give you all the details about those soon.

The ongoing roll call of good taste would be incomplete without a mention of Chicago, Greenlawn, Austin, NYC, Lancaster, Jobstown, Fort Lauderdale, San Antonio, Toronto, Paris, Kensington and Aukland. And also Dan Benjamin who gave us a hand with a vexing PHP problem.

Standard Operating Procedures

With the launch of The New Standards, imminent (really) we're looking for ways to promote that product to folks who make their own mix-tapes or record their own music or package demos for bands and musicians. If you are one of those or know of place where people like that gather online, drop us a note at crew at jewelboxing dot com. We'd love to put a couple contests up and offer some product as prizes. We have two such promotions ready to go and we'd like to get a couple more on the schedule for June.

We've never tried any outbound email for Jewelboxing and are interested in knowing what tools people are using to manage lists and mails, including an automated way for people to subscribe and unsubscribe. Let us know if you have a recommendation.

We can't speak highly enough about Kendal, Denver, NYC x 2, Boston x 3, Valencia, Santa Rosa, Overland Park, Toronto and London.

In the Details

One of the biggest problems we face in expanding this Jewelboxing thing is finding the time to make sure everything is perfect. We've been slower than we would have liked to roll out new products and features (see TripDisc) mostly because we'd rather be late and great than early and good. Client work is still a big part of the CP Studio, and we've basically been thinking of Jewelboxing as a big, demanding client. It can't overwhelm everything else but it needs the attention and service that our customers deserve. So we're walking it a bit slowly. That said, The New Standards are on the way. We've actually shipped about a dozen orders of them, to people who had to have them right now. Write us if you're like that. Plus we'll have a couple really cool new promotions and partnerships to announce soon too.

'Really cool' doesn't begin to tell the stories locked up in our hearts about Tustin, Waikato, Ft. Wayne, Copenhagen, NYC and Sparta.

The End of the Chain

The final winner of a 20pack in the Ad Land Trivia Chain is Robert Hinchcliffe of the excellent Big Smoker. Thanks to everyone who played. Got an idea for a contest or promotion? We're more than likely up for it, just give us a shout.

So tell me who spilled Cinzano on
Joan Collins on a plane.

Here's to Vegas, NYC, Howard Beach, Mequon, Isleworth and Miami

Salt and Shaker

We're sponsoring a contest at The Morning News this week that features the photography of Marshall Sokoloff. Check it out. In other news, it looks like Wednesday will be the day for the launch of The New Standards. A few more packing and shipping tests are needed. We'll toss a test pack or two out the window. Kick another down the stairs and maybe even head over to Home Depot and see if they'll let us throw one on the paint-shaker. Then we'll be good to go. You see, we have to make sure that our products arrive undamaged when we ship them to NYC, Arlington Heights, Atlanta, Milwaukee, Portland or Calgary.

Are you listening? Yes I Am. "Plastics."

Lots of graduates getting ready to enter the work-world. Lots of reels on CD and DVD coming to the CP studios. I'm looking at the 12 most recent packages. 1 trigger-case. 1 hand-made cardboard thingy. 7 regular ol' CD jewelcases, 1 paper sleeve (!) and 2 Super Jewel Boxes, designed and assembled with our system. Here's the coolest part. The design-work on the portfolios in the Jewelboxing packages is much better than the others. Of course, I'm probably a bit biased.

If you're a student, email us and we'll cut you a deal. If you're a student in Chicago, we'll cut you the same deal and you can swing by the studio to say hello and pick up the product and save the shipping cost too.

Why Lufkin, Denver, LA, Ottawa, NYC and Salem, I think you're trying to seduce me.

If Barry Manilow Really Wanted a Jewelboxing 20pack, He Could Win One Easily

Last week the ad-grunts at Ad-Land were playing Trivia Chain by writing short poems that answered an advertising question with another question. The week they're trying to win win a Jewelboxing 20pack by writing commercial jingles. Like this one.

Terry Gilliam, Terry Gilliam
He made a film about junkies
Terry Gilliam, Terry Gilliam
He also made a film about monkeys

Monkeys are cool, monkeys are cool
The talking ones steal your girlfriends.
Which beer brand, which beer brand
Made this idea pay dividends?

We love NYC, DC, Berkeley, San Francisco, Irving and Paso Robles. And we love the way MemoriesOnTV can make creating the disc as easy as Jewelboxing makes creating the package.

Attachments

We've added Robert Josiah's sweet set of mixtape CD gifts to the Examples + Inspirations page. In other news, the second week of the Ad-Land Trivia Chain contest was surprisingly poetic. A lot of it was Clayton Claymore's doing. We're sending him a 20pack. One week to go.

We're feeling a bit sentimental about Chiswick, Alpharetta, NYC, San Diego, Miami and Forth Worth.

Eternal Damnation Is Too Kind

Everybody complains about standard CD packaging but perhaps nobody has put it quite as nicely as Steve Martin in this piece from The New Yorker called Designer of Audio CD Package Enters Hell. Aside from actually getting them to open, the flimsy materials break more often than not, they develop that dusty look over time and then there's that diagonal stress fracture that appears across the front panel.

The Jewelboxing stuff does none of that. And assuming you don't add that strip of evil plastic and super-tight shrink-wrap, your chances of entering hell will be no greater after you order than before.

Atoning for the sin of not posting every day we're saying prayers for Venice, Pittsburgh, LA, NYC, Brooklyn, Emeryville, Jersey City, Burwood, Irvine, Streamwood, Madison and Auckland.

Chain Gang

Last week's winner in the Ad-Land Trivia Chain game was Shoepal who asked a number of excellent questions including this one. Gwyneth Paltrow never drinks, and she adheres to a strict healthy diet. Yet when a $7 million cheque was waved in her face, she agreed to be the new face of Martini in Australia (and Italy) though now she is pregnant with Coldplay's Chris Martin who turned down what actor's request for use of his song in a 2001 film? Congrats Mr. Pal. Your 20pack is on the way. This week's game starts shortly.

We've added Ben Kiel's impressive letterpressed portfilo to our list of sweet packages designed with our system and you probably won't have to look too long to find a few sweet packages in San Luis Obispo, Astoria, Columbus, Bois-de-villers, Cliffside Park or Livonia.

Don't Break the Chain

Looking for an easy way to win a Jewelboxing 20pack? Just answer a question about advertising with a question about advertising at Adland.

Adland is a site "by the ad grunts for the ad grunts" and an inexpensive subscription there gets you access to thousands of tv commercials from all over the world, plus all the latest news and gossip. We've uncovered a few juicy items about people in Glasgow, Oakland, London, Toronto, Muncie and Signal Mountain, but we ain't talking.

The New Pick Up Line

On a semi-regular basis, we get a call from a customer saying, "I'm in Chicago and I think I'm right down the street from you. Can I just come pick up my order?" To which, of course, we always say yes. It's a good way for locals to save a couple bucks on shipping, it's nice to say hello to Jewelboxing customers, and it makes us feel almost like a real live brick and mortar. Well somehow this week, after one of these calls, it finally struck us that we should be making it easier for our customers to know that they can easily swing by and pick up their orders. So we've just added this option to the shopping cart:

If you're local and close by, or just in town for a couple of days for meetings or a conference, and you're looking to order, we hope this will provide a quick method to stop by, pick up, say hello, and get to Jewelboxing right away.