Alicia Keys Digipak analysis

Front CoverThe front cover consists of natural earth colours such as brown orange and black. The dominating natural colour of brown gives the cover a natural authentic style which relates to her contemporary R&B genre of music. The white dots of noise on the image gives the image and old look which links to ‘the diary of Alicia keys’ because it makes the audience feel like we are following her through her journey. Although we half of her face, the piano is in front of her and is dominating the cover. This removes the focus from her appearance and focuses on the main thing that inspires her to do music which is her piano. The dominance of the piano is also used as a brand for Alicia keys because of her name and her talent the audience associate her with a piano. The colour of Alicia’s skin in this image is almost the same as the dominating brow colours which show that she is one with her music. Her face expression is relaxed yet shows that she is hiding something which engages the audience into wanting to buy the album and finding out about her through her songs. The typography of the title of the album is small and lower case which imitates the simple handwriting in a diary. The white colour of the writing stands out in front of the brown background and catches the readers eye.

CD DesignThe CD cover has a white background which allows the audience to identify the images and text on the CD from far. The overlapping images of the keys remind the audience of Alicia because it reinforces her name through the image. The keys could also symbolise her music which unlocks the story of her like and represents the key to her diary. The typography of the album name is the same font but is red which again stands out from far against the white background. The logo of her record label Sony is also make very visible by the black contrasting the white and this emphasizes the name of the label and shows its importance.

Back CoverThe image of the piano takes up most of the frame and dominates the image. Instead of repeating the artists image which most back covers do, the image of the piano is repeating to show its major role in her music. The image of the piano shows the audience that Alicia’s talent of playing the piano is what is the most important instead of her looks which is a different message we get compared to other album covers. The colour code of the writing is white yellow and blue which are all bright and stand out against the black background underneath it. The barcode it placed on the top right corner which works well because it doesn't overlap and disturb the image of the piano.

Which ideas I will subvert into my work

From this digipak one of the main motifs is the piano. My artist for my work also has a guitar which she is associated with and I think it will be good to show the guitar on the images because it shows the audience her inspiration for music.