Due to rights issues, Hal Hartley‘s genius 1991 film, Trust, has sadly never been officially available in the US. This is the film that was my awakening to American indie cinema, which stars the late Adrienne Shelly. Here’s how I imagined it might look like if Criterion got to release it on DVD. One can dream.

The design is adapted, obviously, from the one-sheet–itself, a bit rebellious and unorthodox, as it is designed in horizontal format. The image is iconic, amongst indie film fans. Yes, I know the title is illegible and would thus disqualify it from even getting to a Hollywood distributor in the first place. What, no critic’s quote and star names on the cover? Gotta love Criterion, the only company who could get away with such a marketing faux pas.

Forest Whitaker is one of my favorite actors. While The Last King Of Scotland wasn’t exactly an excellent film, Mr Whitaker himself was excellent, and well-deserving of the Oscar for Best Actor. Creative Impact Agency’s poster is a striking example of graphic design, but the “Idi Amin triplets” treatment on the DVD is just plain ridiculous. The co-lead, James McAvoy, is nowhere to be seen on the box. Ah, marketing. Here’s a Revized look at how reducing CIA’s brilliant poster art to the DVD would’ve been way too easy (and smart).

Here are two takes on the unpopular design direction the Cocteau Twins took on their eighth album, Four-Calendar Café. The original was a sharp departure from the elegant and mysterious designs that adorned their previous releases.

I’m a big Pixies fan, but not a big fan of the solo work by their lead singer, Black Francis. When the Pixies broke up, I bought Frank Black’s (as he was now known) first two albums, which I just couldn’t get into. His third album, The Cult Of Ray (referring to author Ray Bradbury, hence his image in the Revized version), had the most boring cover (incidentally, the first that wasn’t designed by Vaughan Oliver). This sealed the deal for me: I would never buy another Frank Black album again.

Most people know the song “I Melt With You,” but not the band behind the hit, Modern English. Their first five albums were all designed by Vaughan Oliver. Their sixth album’s design makes them look like a completely different band (and they probably were by this point, to be honest).