We were rummaging around the closet at Global Graphica HQ in New York a couple of weeks ago when we found an old box with a bunch of old electronics gear crammed into it: A tangle of USB and Firewire cords, old cellphones and their chargers, adaptors, earbuds, various keyboard mice (mouses), etc.
We also found a long, translucent plastic case by Japanese brand Muji. The case was designed specifically for containing MD’s, or Mini Discs. The case was full of these square storage devices, which could store an album’s worth of hi-fidelity music recorded to these via the Mini Disc player. The device and its disc format were a huge hit in Japan in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. But Mini Discs never took off in America, and eventually (and thankfully) the MP3 digital-audio format and the much better Apple iPod effectively killed off all the competition in the audio-tech product category, including the Mini Disc.
Before throwing all the old electronic junk out, we took a picture of some of the various discs. See below.
GLOBAL GRAPHICA 