Packaging
The artwork is designed to resemble a floppy disk. The sleeve does not display either the group name nor song title in plain English anywhere; the only text on the sleeve is “FAC SEVENTY THREE” on the spine. Instead the legend “FAC 73 BLUE MONDAY AND THE BEACH NEW ORDER” is represented in code by a series of coloured blocks. The key enabling this to be deciphered was printed on the back sleeve of the album, Power, Corruption & Lies. “Blue Monday” and Power, Corruption & Lies are two of four Factory releases from this time period to employ the colour code, the others being "Confusion" by New Order and From the Hip by Section 25.
The single’s original sleeve, created by Factory designer Peter Saville and Brett Wickens, was die-cut with a silver inner sleeve. It cost so much to produce that Factory Records actually lost money on each copy sold. Matthew Robertson’s Factory Records: The Complete Graphic Album notes that “ue to the use of die-cutting and specified colours, the production cost of this sleeve was so high that the single sold at a loss.” Tony Wilson noted that it lost 5p per sleeve “due to our strange accounting system”; Saville noted that nobody expected “Blue Monday" to be a commercially successful record at all, so nobody expected the cost to be an issue. In fact, in Shadowplayers: The Rise and Fall of Factory Records, Saville states “I am so bored with this story. We didn’t even know how many of these expensive covers were ever made anyway.”
Robertson also noted that “ater reissues had subtle changes to limit the cost” (the diecut areas being replaced with printed silver ink).
There is a separate reason why New Order probably saw little profit from the single’s success, namely the fact that an investment in the Haçienda nightclub swallowed much of the money they made from their hit.
The 1988 and 1995 versions were packaged in conventional sleeves.
Read more about this topic: Blue Monday (New Order Song)