Box Art

[ABED]

What are your favorite examples of box art? Do you prefer simpler designs or more elaborate images? Are you indifferent? Is good box art important to you?

I love the Pioneer DVD/VHS box art. It was simple and I prefer minimalism. Box art has never been that important to me, even though I can appreciate a good cover, but the FUNi singles were so low effort it was embarrassing. Some of the covers used screenshots that were such odd choices, like the one where Piccolo is carrying Trunks and Goten under his arms to carry them away from danger. Others were fairly good and looked almost professional, like "Trunks - Prelude to Terror".

[MasenkoHA]

As long as it's not just a simple screen grab like Funimation started out doing its fine by me. I really did like the Ultimate Uncut box art.

[MrSatan2099]

Pioneer movies 1-3 had my favorite US release packaging ever. I also like the uniform look of the steel books.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

I like the Pioneer covers of Z movies 1-3, GT singles, FUNi/Japanese Dragon Boxes and Ultimate Uncut Editions.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

You can't beat the old Pioneer covers:

The movies and the box art were also beautiful:

Some of the inhouse DVD single art wasn't bad, this one in the heat of battle between Goku and Freeza is nice:

And for all their faults with picture quality I do kinda like the covers for Funimation's 2013/14 Blu-Rays and how they line up to make a complete picture. I wish we could have more covers like that depicting scenes rather than just a character or two with some one shade colour in the background, I think with the Kai and Super releases box art has gone a bit too simple, although it's not bad.

[90sDBZ]

I think cool looking cover art plays at least a small part in people being willing to double dip with the various releases. You walk into a store and see your favourite show or movie with a flashy new cover, and immediately you have to fight the urge to buy it again. I might even go as far as to say updating the packaging repeatedly has allowed Funimation to get away with murder.

I agree the Pioneer covers look awesome. I only own a couple of them. I have the Rock the Dragon set so technically I don't need them, but part of me wants them because they look cool. The later singles which I do own were indeed hit and miss with their covers.

I'm not sure what exactly I prefer on a cover. The main thing is the characters looking like themselves, and preferably being in a cool pose. I do like how colourful and detailed the 2014 blu-ray covers look, although I never owned them.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

I'm definitely guilty of double, in some cases triple and quadruple dipping. I ended up buying the Manga UK Z Blu-Rays to have the show in 4:3 because I owned it all but in 16:9, then recently I got the steelbooks on Zavvi (only missing season 1), I just seen videos and thought they looked gorgeous. I also collected most of the original DVD singles just to have the original Funimation dub as an option.

I also own the original Star Wars trilogy three times. I own the 2004 special editions, which were the first DVD boxset I ever got and are sentimental in that regard, 2006 DVDs for the theatrical cuts and the 2011 Blu-Ray boxset because despite all the changes George Lucas continued to add it had a button load of extras, which I love to watch. I quite like the box art for all those releases too.

Rock the Dragon has a nice cover, although it depicts a slightly older Goku than the one that faced off against Vegeta, but it's a nice looking collectors item with the strong red background. Still raging I missed out on it, as I'd love to own it even though I have the Pioneer singles.

I would also say the original UK DVDs from AB Groupe and Warner Vision had really nice cover art, sadly they only contained the Big Green dub though:

[MrSatan2099]

Some of the inhouse DVD single art wasn't bad, this one in the heat of battle between Goku and Freeza is nice:

I remember tracing that off of a friend's vhs tape back in the 6th grade.

[TheGreatness25]

I think that this is my favorite box art of all time (despite kid Goku's face).



Had nothing to do with anything, but this is just nice-looking.

I'm also very partial to every Dragon Box.

[eledoremassis02]

The old pioneer VHS boxsets for me. I remember seeing them on the store shelves and looking at that spine art, 100 dollars per saga.

I also loved how pioneer had super Saiyan Goku on 2 covers lol then again if you had the internet, you already saw ssj3

The new super steels are also very classy!

[Saiya6Cit]

I like metallic boxes. I owned a few from disney, they would come in simple designs usually displaying only one character and the background being black, silver or golden. Obviously metal provides better protection to the disc than plastic.

[MasenkoHA]

This thread also reminded me how much I disliked the dvd season sets just featuring a single character to represent a season. It's a severe limitation Funimation put on themselves leading to oddities like Gohan not being used at all in Z's Orange Bricks despite his prominence there. Or Tenshinhan not appearing on any of the Blue Bricks despite being more a more important character in season 3 and 4 than Krillin and Roshi were in season 2 and 3. Or Majin Buu not appearing on the Orange Bricks but Cell and Frieza do

[Cold Skin]

It's kinda complicated to explain, and I would not know how to design a cover I like myself, but... I seem to like it when covers seem very well-detailed and with an artistic flair, but not oversaturated with tons of elements at the same time.

Something a bit paradoxical, that makes it feel "deluxe", expensive, respected as a high-end work, well-detailed all over, but at the same time not overcrowded, not overloaded, very clear, very spaced out and easy on the eyes despite being very detailed, and not minimalistic either.
So it's not easy to explain, something that feels very simple but in a detailed way, or very detailed but in a simple way.

This cover for the movies is an example of what I really like to see for a cover:
to me, you could describe it as very detailed and "deluxe", but you could also describe it as very simple and instantaneously legible.