Digipak - Existing Products

I went through the CD rack at home and searched for a few CDs I could analyse of a similar genre to our music. I took a picture of both the inside panels and the outside. Here's what I found....

Two Door Cinema Club - Tourist History

Admittedly the consistent house style isn't immediately evident in this digipak, but then you look closer and aspects of the design reoccur through different panels. The cat which we see on the front cover is very abstract and has know relevance to Two Door Cinema Club's music at all. However, weird and wonderful ideas are used in Indie music and that's why the fans love the music. The cat's eyes reoccur on the actual disc in the digipak showing some consistency in house style. In terms of colour scheme, two of the panels are white and the other two consist of dark colours and have a slightly fuzzy effect to them. Again this shows some consistency in house style. The font used for the cover is the font Two Door Cinema Club always use and this is a quick way to identify the band. The font reappears on the disc as well. On the back cover of the album like we see on the majority of albums there is a list of tracks which feature on the album. The font is Two Door Cinema Club's very own again and the text is centred.

Coldplay - Mylo Xyloto

The name of the album, 'Mylo Xyloto', has an unknown meaning, even Coldplay themselves haven't really made up a true meaning for it. Therefore this has given them the freedom to create wild and wonderful ideas for their album, there's no barriers as to what it can be about. Here the bright fluorescent colour scheme clearly boasts a consistent house style throughout. The use of bright colours is going to catch the customer's eye and also it's something the CD is going to be remembered for. The front cover has the album's name illustrated in a big bold font across the middle of it. The actual font design is distinctive and it occurs throughout the album, showing just the outlining of the letters. In the top left hand corner there is a sticker which informs the customer of a couple of the hit tracks it has on the album. This could make the difference in a customer wanting to buy it or not. The back cover lists the tracks from the album where the text is centred and in the font we see on he front cover. The inside cover show's the initials of the album name which again reminds the public of it's identity.

 Kasabian - Velociraptor
This album clearly has a consistent black and white colour scheme running through it. The album name is 'Velociraptor', the name of a dinosaur, this idea of dinosaurs is shown on most panels of the digipak. The front cover shows four cavemen screaming. This links to the dinosaur age theme, where cavemen would have been terrified of the dinosaurs. The idea that there is four of them makes me think that each one represents each band member as there are four people in Kasabian. The name of the album is presented just below the band name on the front cover but upside down, as in a mirror effect. This is used on the back cover aswell, below the list of tracks is an upside down picture of the band. I think this picture of the band is important because it reminds the customer of who's actually produced the music. The inside panel shows what appears to be another caveman like character walking a dinosaur on reigns, supposedly the Velociraptor? When I first looked at the disc to the digipak I just thought it had a pattern on it but if you look closely there are four faces screaming on it in the same positions as the cavemen are on the front cover.

Digipak - Research

So what is the importance of the Digipak?
The cover of the Digipak is the first thing the customers are going to see when they walk into the music store and so it must be able to catch the eye of any potential buyers. The cover must represent the artist and also give the public an idea of the genre of music they'll find when they buy the music. The picture on the front of the album isn't just going to be on the CD, it will be seen in magazines, on t-shirts, on the internet and on television. This means that it's vital to get the cover right first time and make sure that it represents everything about the band and the music. The colour scheme and house style must be consistent through all four panels of the digipak. For our media products we''ll be looking to use dark colours because the majority of our music video is filmed at night time.


What design do we put on the cover?

Looking at existing products from our genre of music it seems that half have computer animated images/cartoons on the cover and half have photos. Something they all have in common is that they're all abstract and slightly edgy, this reflects the music genre. We are thinking of taking a screenshot out of our music video and editing it using photoshop. This way there will be clear coherence between all of our media products, this is essential.


Are the other three panels even important?
When I first heard about this part of the project this question came to mind, but now I've realised that this is a silly question. If the other three panels didn't matter then you would have a lot of disappointed customers when they buy and open the CD. The back cover and both inside panels must share the same house style and themes as the front cover so the audience have a way of identifying the album (eg. the fluorescent CD or the desaturated CD). The inside panels is where the audience are going to actually find the CD so they will pay attention to the designs as they pluck the CD from the "teeth" of the hub which secures the disc in place.

Digipak - Research

I've looked on the internet for Fenech Soler album covers and single covers for inspiration when we come to making our digipak. From the collage you can see that they all share similar characteristics, they all seem to have triangular shapes on them and the font is the same for most. We'll have to consider this when we make our digipak although these look hard to recreate.

We were thinking of using a photo but these all look like computer animated images. However, if this is what pleases the target audience then this is the route we'll have to consider taking. To produce our digipak we'll be using Photoshop.