We’ve got a couple of custom Blu-ray artwork designs to share with you, to help showcase your Trek collection — and we’re starting today with a first look at a massive do-it-yourself Next Generation collection box set, by TrekCore contributor Justin Olson!

Justin Olson’s custom Borg Cube Blu-ray collection

If you’re anything like me, odds are you followed CBS’s superlative TNG remastering project from the very beginning when it was first announced, all the way back in September of 2011.

You may have even purchased — with great anticipation — every Next Generation Blu-ray disc released, from the original Next Level sampler disc all the way through this month’s final Season 7 set. By now, if you’re one of the die-hard collectors, you’ve likely got all 13 Next Gen sets on your shelf.

As we’ve reported, a complete-series “Full Journey” box set has been released in both Australia and the UK, though it’s missing the five standalone discs released in North America and a few other regions over the years.

If you’re only interested in the seven-year packaging, you could buy it like those who have waited until now to own the series — it is region free, after all — but that’s a major purchase if you’re only looking to upgraded your disc cases.

Bottom line: if you like what you’ve already got, but are looking for a classy-looking way to store the great Next Generation Blu-rays, read on!

Inspiration

About two months ago, as the street date for the final two TNG Blu-ray sets loomed ever closer, I became intrigued with the idea of creating a custom box set for all thirteen releases. Doing some preliminary research, I quickly found images of a limited edition Region 2 DVD set for TNG (that came with a clock!), and a Region 4 DVD set for Voyager, each designed like Borg cubes.

It soon became apparent that making a version of these sets for the TNG Blu-rays might actually be achievable. The goal was to design and build something that looked at least as good as those releases and not cost an arm and a leg — or at least, not more than the typical cost of a single season of TNG on Blu-ray. Also, I wanted to make sure this design would have room for the Next Level sampler, as well as the standalone discs.

After a little digging, I found a high resolution image of a Borg cube on Ex Astris Scientia that, according to them, originated on Drex Files, the eponymous blog that was run by Star Trek makeup and visual effects artist Doug Drexler:

Much of the credit here goes to Mr. Drexler for making this image available in the first place, as I would not have been able to create as detailed and realistic an image of a Borg cube without it as the basis for the artwork you see below.

Designing the Set

I began to modify the Borg cube image, trying different looks, shifting the overall tone toward blue, adding a dark vignette around the edges, etc. I knew that, rather than appearing dormant and deactivated, I wanted it to look as if it were alive and lit from the inside as it appears on the show.

Outer shell design

I also added some bronze hues on the outer surface to better mimic how the model’s paint job appears in the new remastering. In particular, TrekCore’s striking new Blu-ray screencaps of the landmark double episode “The Best of Both Worlds, Parts I & II” were of great help.

Unfortunately, no entirely accurate vectorized version of the series logo is available online (that I could find, anyway), so I had to start with a pair of freely available Next Generation title fonts. Working on each letter separately, I carefully positioned and adjusted them as best I could over the design currently used by CBS on the official Blu-ray packaging as a guide.

But that only got me so far, so I had to convert the text layers to shapes and modify them further as paths, all while keeping it vectorized so it would stay sharp at any size.

Test render for internal design

I next tried to track down the various corporate logos (the website Brands Of The World came in very handy here) and other familiar home video symbols and copied the lengthy disclaimers and copyright notices found on the backs of the official TNG Blu-rays.

Some logos were ever so slightly different than what was freely available (like the Paramount and CBS logos), so I modified them to make them look as accurate as possible.

Designing the Booklet

Lastly, the episode guide booklet I wanted to design as a companion piece. Booklets such as these are helpful additions to box sets I think, and are often sadly overlooked in many Blu-ray releases in North America. While I’m the kind of fan who knows the episode titles by heart and can tell you which season a particular episode can be found in, I haven’t yet memorized what Blu-ray disc houses which episode.

It’s true that CBS does provide a listing of disc contents on the reverse of the artwork found inside of every season, but what if you haven’t decided what episode you wanted to watch yet, let alone what season? Wouldn’t it be helpful to be able to search through a booklet that contains all the episode titles along with their loglines?

The creation of this booklet was fairly straightforward, as I’d done a lot of the work already, having designed custom TNG episode inserts and guides since Season One came out, both with lists of disc contents and ones with episode summaries.

Inside this 18-page booklet you’ll first find a nice cast photo, along with information about the show that appears on the official Star Trek website as well as brief crew biographies of the senior officers (also derived from those found on the official site).

The season specific disc contents and episode summaries can be found on page 3 through 16 of the booklet. The summaries come from Paramount Television’s decades old highlight listings for each episode — summaries that are still used to this day on CBS’s website — though I’ve condensed them somewhat in certain cases to make them fit on a single line.

Each season has two pages of information. On the left side you’ll find the aforementioned disc contents; on the right you’ll find the episode summaries.

The last two pages of the booklet list the six standalone, feature-length Blu-ray releases and the special features that can be found on each disc.