The appearance of the human-readable side of a CD is fairly important to me. I don't keep the media for music, movies, games, or applications in their original cases. I keep them in massive black binders for easy access. This means that the appearance of the CD case is less important than the appearance of the actual CD. (In retrospect, since I don't ever really have any reason to dig out a CD once I've bought it, I should probably put them back in the cases and use the binders for something more useful. Perhaps I'll do this when I re-rip all of my music losslessly.) Anyway, I decided I would list my favorite music CDs based on the appearance of the actual disc. (You know, to waste your time.)

Alanis Morissette—Under Rug Swept (cool, stylized picture of Alanis)
Basement Jaxx—Romeo (purple paw wearing bling-bling)
Maroon 5—Songs About Jane (cartoon of Jane; very easy to read)
Newsboys—Adoration (photo taken from under some kind of freeway interchange)
John Williams—Jurassic Park (the unmistakable T-rex logo)

A special lifetime achievement award goes to Amon Tobin for the most consistent series of interesting CD labels. They're distinctive, but all look similar enough that you know right away they're the same artist.

The hall of shame goes to Thievery Corporation. One CD has a blank label and the CD title printed only in the plastic ring in the center. Another CD is all matte white except the title, which is glossy white. You can only read it if you hold it up to the light. And one of their CDs isn't labeled at all. Enya gets the runner-up hall of shame award for her ridiculously boring CDs, most of which are just the Enya logo and a track listing in black.