Shelf Harmony

January 5, 2026 · Design

There's something almost meditative about a Criterion release. The deliberate typography. The carefully curated cover art. The essays, the restored transfers, the hours of supplemental material that treat every film—whether arthouse darling or overlooked genre gem—with genuine reverence.

I love all of it. Maybe too much.

Because here's the problem: once you've lined up a row of those iconic spines, everything else on your shelf starts to look... wrong. That neon-green slipcover from a studio tentpole? The eight competing fonts on a bargain bin rerelease? They stick out like a misplaced pixel.

Call it designer's OCD. Call it an unhealthy relationship with visual consistency. Either way, I had to fix it.

The Project

For every non-Criterion Blu-ray in my collection, I've designed a custom case that borrows from the Criterion aesthetic—clean typography, considered color palettes, artwork that actually says something about the film. It's been an excuse to obsess over films I already love while scratching that itch for visual order.

But I didn't stop at repackaging retail releases.

For a handful of favorites, I've also designed cases for fan edits that I've burned to Blu-ray—labors of love from other obsessives that reflect how I wish these films had been released. My contribution is the packaging: artwork, inserts, and case design that let these alternate versions sit comfortably alongside the originals on my shelf.

A couple examples:

Blade Runner: The Penultimate Cut — A fan edit that takes the 4K Final Cut and restores the original theatrical color grading, along with a few charming analog artifacts—visible wires, optical compositing seams—that got scrubbed clean in later restoration passes. Imperfection as texture.

The Star Wars Prequels: Abridged — Hours of footage trimmed to their essentials by dedicated editors. Fewer senate proceedings. Significantly less Jar Jar. Every instance of young Anakin shouting "yippee!" surgically removed. The bones of interesting films, finally allowed to breathe.

A Note on Ownership

I want to be clear: I own a physical copy of every film represented here. This isn't piracy dressed up in nice typography—it's a personal project, a love letter to movies I've watched dozens of times, and an excuse to keep practicing my craft.