Conventions of digipak form

What is a Digipak ?

A digipak is  a patened style of CD or DVD packaging , and is a registerd trademark of AGI media , a meadwestaco, etc. They normally have a gatefold like a book. The outer packaging is made of card, paper and the inner packaging is made of plastic and are normally used on special editions and albums.They became popular with artists and record labels in the early 2000s. Digipaks are designed to fold into a square CD case. They can fold many different ways and can have different amount of panels.

Front

The front of the digipaks tend to have a large eye- catching picture on them. The picture illustrated on the front panels, tend to have some relation to the songs or artist. The song / album title is also found on the front panel.

Back

Like the front is very much to draw the consumers in and often includes the track list , album, artwork , record label, barcode , extra information.


Inside 

Inside a digipak you can find the plastic holder for the actual CD itself. The inside of the digipak is used more for the information and extra bits to do with the artist/song/album.

Digipak analysis:

Nirvana 

• Society has become very child-centered with the use of the baby under the water the cover aims to communicate a political statement against capitalism
• It is a popular album cover due to being unique as a result reflects the genre of the band 
• There is no image of the band which suggests that they are more concerned with the music rather than the superficiality of the music industry 

Michael Jackson

• The cover is a closeup of the artist making the focus of the album the artist , encouraged by the monochrome palette adopted .
• His pose excuses sex appeal making him more attractive to his audience , emphasised by the lighting the almost angelic backlit glow 

Beatles 

• The cover is a collage by Peter Blake of famous icons as a result it is as if the are trying to sell themselves as icons. 
• Despite this because the composition is very busy , they are not the main focus which suggests that they are tying not to sell themselves.

Beyonce 

• The classic monochrome palette adopted makes her stand out 
• The fact that she is looking up away from the camera makes her look powerful and superior