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So I have a bunch of DVDs. About four or five hundred. Before I moved in with my wife Marisa, I did not have cable television, and I would just pick a movie to toss on for an evenings entertainment.

Over the years, I’ve collected a bunch of James Bond movies. But because I didn’t buy them all at once, and rather just picked them up haphazardly as they went on sale, they are all from different releases, and they don’t look at all like they go together on the shelf.

Some of them are bilingual, some aren’t, and the design was just all over the place from one set to the next.

Just a big mess. my wife has a bit of OCD in her, and I just thought it was bad design. I bought four new additions last week, and now that the movies were taking up significant shelf space, it really started to bug me. So I decided since no one else would, that I’d fix it myself.

First up, I downloaded a DVD cover template that had all the measurements laid out on an 8.5″ by 11″ sheet of paper for easy printing and cutting. Then, I used Google to dig up some suitable imagery. Artist Ross Burt had some cool stuff on his Deviant Art page, and that set the tone perfectly. I used The 007 logo, futura font, and I did a half-tone screen to grey-out the other Bond’s, leaving only the starring Bond clear.

Very minimalist, but also very sharp.

I had them printed up at Staples, cost was under five dollars. I cut them to size myself in-store when I picked them up, as they have a nice big paper cutter for client use. That took about half an hour.

Then it was time to insert them into the DVD cases. I kept the old covers, and just slid the new ones in over top of them.

Never Say Never again is a non-MGM Bond. It also has a really awful DVD cover!

But no longer! Now it’s looking sharp, and is way more stylish.

The Living Daylights shows the standard Bond cover, and compared to the new Scott version.

This is how they line up on the shelf now. I added the year to the spine so that they could easily be placed in order. The one mistake I made is that I realized too late that “On her Majesty’s Secret Service” was too long a title for the design I had used, and I had to use a smaller size for the font. I had already done half of the covers, though, I didn’t feel like going back and re-sizing them all. It’s okay, though, it still looks sharp.

All in all, this was a pretty easy project, and I’m thrilled with the result. I have the template saved and ready to go for when I pick up “Skyfall” or some of the back catalog that I’m missing.