DIGIPAK RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS

Conventions of a Digipak

• The Digipak’s aim is to promote the artist and sell the physical album. • The Digipak must have a consistent ‘house style’; this may include colour, font and

imagery. • The design and content must not only be consistent throughout the product itself but

also with affiliated products which together make up the brand of the artist; this includes the music video and website.

• The Digipak’s style should also clearly reflect the genre of music that the artist belongs to.

• The Digipak must be of very high quality as it is a relatively expensive product (in comparison to cd’s or mp3’s); and so should be presented as an attractive luxury/novelty product.

• The Digipak must be ergonomic; it’s design should make the product as easy and pleasant to use for the audience as possible- this may be achieved through the use of cut outs, tabs and pockets, and an easy to follow layout.

• Many Digipaks are constructed to present a ‘subliminal message’ to the audience, particularly a message that is also conveyed by the music itself.

THE EXTERIOR• The exterior of the Digipak must clearly show the name of the artist and the album, as well as the artist’s

recognised logo if applicable. • The Digipak should have images of the artist themselves, to make the product instantly recognisable as their work

and to help promote the artist. • There should be a track list (usually on the back) detailing the names of the songs that are included in the album,

along with numbers showing their order on the CD for ease of use as the audience can then skip straight to the song that they want to listen to. This is also important as the audience would be attracted to purchase the album when they see that it features particular songs, and will also give them an idea of how much content they are getting for their money.

• There must be a barcode to allow the album to be bought, along with the price.• There should also be ownership acknowledgements to cater for legal requirements; these would include the name

and often logo of the production company, and copyright information. • The web address of the artist’s website should be included somewhere on the Digipak, to promote further content

and create a larger audience for the site which works as another promotion tool for the artist as well as being a place from which the audience can purchase further products such as merchandise, tickets or music.

• Some Digipaks include review quotes which give a good reference for the album/artist. This would appeal to an audience who may not be familiar with the artist but would trust the source. (this is particularly useful if the quote is from an institution popular with the target audience.)

• Some Digipaks also include a sticker on the front to add extra interest; the sticker usually promotes one of the singles included on the album if the song has been popular and well known. Alternatively it may advertise ‘extras’ included in the purchase of the Digipak, or awards that the artist has received for the album.

• Some Digipaks print the date and timespan of the production of the album somewhere on the Digipak. This makes the Digipak seem like a ‘collectors item’ and gives the audience a degree of personal insight and sense of value for the album. It also implies that the release of the album should be considered as a sort of ‘historical event’, making it exciting for the audience.

• There should be advertisements highlighting any exclusive features of the album, such as bonus tracks, videos, and lyrics.

THE INTERIOR• The interior should also include further images of the artist, to reinforce their importance and

add interest to the Digipak for their fans. This may include set up, stylised, and often edited photo-shoot images, as well as more natural performance and backstage shots taken from the artist’s tour.

• The Digipak should contain at least two disks. This may consist of the album split into multiple parts; this would be used in the case of very long albums containing lots of songs. This may also be used to separate songs in cases where the artist has produced songs in contrasting styles (such as in the case of Beyoncé's “I am… Sasha Fierce”). Alternatively there may be just one disk containing the album alongside other disks containing exclusive or reworked music, DVD’s of the corresponding music videos, live performance footage or behind the scenes/”making of” documentaries. There should be a good quantity of content included, to make the audience feel that they are getting their money’s worth.

• Digipaks usually contain a take out booklet, which allows much more content to be included. The booklet would contain lyrics to the songs, allowing the audience to learn the words and sing along. There would also be lots of images of the artist as well as other images that are relevant to the songs and ideas presented by the album and add an atmospheric effect. Many of the images are printed in the booklet as a double page spread, which grabs the audience’s attention and allows for more detail. The booklet may also contain interviews with the artist, biographical information, quotes, tour details, credits and thanks.

• Details providing ‘extras’ should be included; this may be a link to a free download of a song or competition information.

DIGIPAK ANALYSIS 1 GRIMES – ART ANGELS

For the Art Angels album by Grimes there is one cover, with a variety of different featuring artwork. All of the artwork is featured in both the CD and Vinyl editions, with the exceptions of the CD version containing the artwork in a booklet and the Vinyl version containing the artwork as separate prints. The constant within all varieties is the colour scheme and the fonts used. The main featured character of the “Art Angels” takes the central position on the cover. The album title, always slightly above. This is hardly a non conventional technique and is adopted by a great many CD digipaks and album covers. The three separate fonts used on the cover are distinctly different, one, very digitalised and formal and the other extremely scruffy and almost handwritten like. This provides an effective counterpoint. Having three separate fonts on a cover is a more standard technique used on digipaks unless a very standardized theme is used. The fonts used are actually very unique and recognizable which is helps the viewer remember the album cover, typically.

The colour scheme is something I would not consider to be exactly conventional even though it follows a standardized rule of primary colours. The use of bright blue and red next to each other are not often seen, but work very well in this circumstance. It provides an extremely unusual eye-catching effect, especially making the Japanese anime looking characters stand out in their sections.

Due to the slightly odd nature of the “Art Angels” album cover, it would be expected that the imagery/stylings used would similarly follow suit – which this album cover in particular does. The illustrative character on the front appears as an eccentric piece of art, with features like three eyes and roots growing from its side. The image stands out to emphasize the unusualness of the Grimes album, alongside her personality that is brought across through artwork, instrumentation and lyrical content.

Art Angels is the fourth studio album by Canadian singer and songwriter Claire Boucher, professionally known as Grimes. It was digitally released on November 6, 2015 by 4AD, and in physical formats on December 11.

Grimes released Art Angels on both CD and vinyl, with the vinyl version missing out the song “Realiti” due to a lack of quality space on the vinyl.Special edition artwork prints drawn by Grimes herself were included in the vinyl package.

Grime’s digipak includes the following:• Name of artist• Name of album• Tracklisting• Barcode• Artist website• Record label website• Artwork prints (vinyl version only)• Record label/Production company credits• Ownership acknowledgements• Free mp3 download link (vinyl version only)• 4, 6 and 8 panel card wallet

DIGIPAK ANALYSIS 2 FLUME - SKIN

There is very little text on this album (digipak). Like Art Angels, there are a lot of single artworks for “Skin”, however it features a lot less text that is done in a very simplistic and standardised font, and is made to be the less important aspect of the cover so that you can focus more on the design. Due to the graphics on the cover, there isn't really any room for a ‘huge’ amount of text, so personally this works well for an unusual, but creative design.

The colour scheme employed is obviously, again, very bright and unusual, however this time it features a set of colours (purples, pinks and blues) that match closer than the Art Angels colours do. This is very abstract, not only is it intriguing to look at, but the colours used are very harmonious and generally gives the album cover a very ‘soft’ feel in terms of cover. This unusual and contrasting colour scheme is used on every variation of the album artwork, with certain pieces of artwork containing greens and yellows also.

The imagery, or rather, graphics used on the album artwork for ‘Skin’ are obviously varied (as stated before) – they are often abstract and flower like. It is definitely detailed within the different petals and because of this it can be considered a very interesting piece of artwork. The variations of the imagery are also ‘nice’ to look at, however may not be considered for a large majority of album covers due to its unique abstract abilites.

Skin is the second studio album by Australian electronic musician Flume. It marks the second full-length release since his self-titled debut in 2012, marking four years between releases.

Flume released Skin on both CD and vinyl, with 3 different vinyl types to choose from: • Black• Transparent• Limited Edition Purple/Patterned

Special edition artwork prints were included in the limited edition purple vinyl package, however every format of his album came with standard artwork visuals that were attached to the album booklet/credits.

Flume’s digipak includes the following:• Name of artist• Name of album• Tracklisting• Record label/Production company credits• A promotional sticker on the front listing hit singles• Artwork prints (CD version in booklet, vinyl version as vinyl covers/additional prints in limited edition version)• Record label websites• Ownership acknowledgements• Take out booklet• Free mp3 download link (vinyl version only)• 4, 6 and 8 panel card wallet

DIGIPAK ANALYSIS 3FKA TWIGS – M3LL155X

Unlike Skin and Art Angels “M3LL155X” contains no text on its cover or its back whatsoever, only images. This is an unusual feature for an album digipak to leave out, but works well to create a greater feel towards the genre that FKA Twigs’ album represents and emphasizes the use of the imagery more.

The images used are particularly unusual and non conventional. On the cover we experience FKA Twigs’ hand to be literally inside of her face, expressing an eccentric feel even further throughout this genre and her personality within music. Similar aspects are featured on the back with a male going through her body. This is incredibly interesting and is certainly more than affective at capturing the eye. Alongside having a plain black background, these images stand out more due to the bright contrast they obtain, which again makes the viewer focus more on the ‘freaky’ looking individual.

The colour palette used is completely natural. The use of black and white creates a simplistic feel towards the cover, alongside the natural difference in human skin colours to stand out alongside their costume choices against the background. This provides not only a nice contrast, but because of this contrast in colours, again, the individual is highlighted and is more of a focus to the viewer. Overall the digipak cover has a very ‘naturalistic’ feel towards it colour wise, and a rugged feel which is provoked by the imagery.

M3LL155X is the third extended play by English singer and songwriter FKA Twigs, released on 13 August 2015 by Young Turks.

FKA Twigs released LP1 on both CD and vinyl.Special edition artwork prints were included in the vinyl package.

FKA Twigs; digipak includes the following:• Name of artist (on the disc)• Name of album (on the disc)• Tracklisting• Lyric booklet• Record label/Production company credits• Free mp3 download link (vinyl version only)• Ownership acknowledgements• 4, 6 and 8 panel card wallet• Artwork (hidden inside the card wallet where

the disc is kept)

FKA Twigs released EP3 on vinyl.

• FKA Twigs’ digipak includes the following:

• Tracklisting• Record label/Production

company credits• Ownership acknowledgements• Free mp3 download link (vinyl

version only)• Artwork (attached to the vinyl

sleeves)

DIGIPAK ANALYSIS 4KAYTRANADA – 99.9%

Just like M3LL155X, “99.9%” features no text over its front cover, but this time includes text on the back cover for the tracklist (even though the text has been featured very small, so isn’t very well emphasized on the back of the album digipak).

The colour scheme is a large variation of colours. A running theme can clearly be seen as a black background, with multiple colours spread across the top of it. This works well to outline different shapes/objects on both the cover and the back.

The graphics can definitely be seen as the largest component of the digipak, but they are also the most prominent and important part. The incredibly detailed design that spreads across every single gap on black background of the digipak is really very well made through different artistic objects. It is certainly very easy to look at in detail when zooming into particular areas of this digipak, and any digipak which grabs the individuals attention enough to study the graphics/artwork fully and with a lot of time consumed is certainly one that is effective in the long run. If asked which of the 4 digipaks we felt was the most memorable, we would have to say this digipak due to its large variety of visuals.

99.9% is the debut studio album by Canadian electronic music producer Kaytranada, released on May 6, 2016, through XL Recordings worldwide and HW&W Recordings in Canada.

KAYTRANADA released 99.9% on both CD and vinyl.

KAYTRANADA’s digipak includes the following:• Name of artist (on a sticker stuck on the front)• Name of album (on a sticker stuck on the front)• Barcode• Tracklist• Ownership acknowledgements• 4, 6 and 8 panel card wallet• Record label/Production company credits• Free mp3 download link (vinyl version only)• Lyric booklet• Artwork (printed into the booklet and on the insides of the case)

EXTRA DIGIPAK ANALYSIS

Sky Ferreira released Night Time, My Time on both CD and vinyl, with 3 different vinyl types to choose from: • Black• Limited Edition Green• Limited Edition Picture

Sky Ferreira also released Night Time, My Time B-Sides Part 1 as an extra CD for promotion.

Sky Ferreira’s digipak includes the following:• Name of artist (as a sticker to cover her nudity)• Name of album (as a sticker to cover her nudity)• Tracklisting• Record label/Production company credits• Artwork prints (in booklet)• Barcode• Record label websites• Ownership acknowledgements• Take out booklet• Free mp3 download link (vinyl version only)• Jewel CD case

Melanie Martinez released Dollhouse EP on both CD and vinyl, with a special limited edition coloured vinyl to mimic her half and half hair colour.

Melanie Martinez’s digipak includes the following:• Name of artist • Name of album • Tracklisting• Record label/Production company credits• Barcode• Record label websites• Ownership acknowledgements• Free mp3 download link (vinyl version only)• 4, 6 and 8 panel card wallet• Sticker on front cover including hit singles

Melanie Martinez released Cry Baby on both CD and vinyl, with a standard black vinyl edition and a special limited edition picture vinyl to mimic her childhood/baby like theme.

Melanie’s album also included a storybook containing the main storyline of Martinez’s alter ego “Cry Baby” to go alongside her songs.

Melanie Martinez’s digipak includes the following:• Name of artist (on disc)• Name of album • Tracklisting• Record label/Production company credits• Barcode• Record label websites• Ownership acknowledgements• Free mp3 download link (vinyl version only)• 4, 6 and 8 panel card wallet• Storybook• Parental advisory explicit content sticker (on the cover)• Social media links

Shawn Mendes released Handwritten on both CD and vinyl, with a standard black vinyl edition and a special limited edition blue coloured vinyl to match the font of his logo.

Shawn released an extended version of his album called “Handwritten Revisited” shortly after due to releasing hit song “I Know What You Did Last Summer” with Camila Cabello of Fifth Harmony.

Shawn Mendes’ digipak includes the following:• Name of artist • Name of album • Tracklisting• Record label/Production company credits• Barcode• Record label websites• Lyric booklet• Ownership acknowledgements• Free mp3 download link (vinyl version only)• Jewel CD Case• Artwork prints (vinyl version only)