Ancillary: Digipak Research

Another task to complete for ancillary work was to compose a digipak for an upcoming album of the artist I am focusing on. I had the general idea of what a digipak was and included but in order to get a better idea of what I should and shouldn't incorporate into mine I did some further research. At first I looked into what digipak's generally consisted of and then those inside my genre. The general design of a digipak is the developed version of a CD, DVD or Blu-Ray Disc packaging. Typically, it includes a gatefold card stock outer binding or paperboard, with at least one plastic disc tray attached to it depending on what CD is and what the artist is offering. A complete digipak usually contains a front cover, back cover and booklet inside. The booklet inside usually has pictures of the artist inside and lyrics of the song on the album, perhaps information on the band/artist and it's members too. In my opinion, the most important feature of a digipak/album is the cover. This is as it's the first thing people will see whether shopping online/iTunes or in-store at a music shop. I personally believe it is essential for the cover to be quirky and catch people's eye as people who may not even be a fan of the particular artist could potentially be drawn in and end up buying it.

I typed into Google 'most influential album sleeves' in order to see what stood out and in general what made a successful album cover. I found this article of 'Rolling Stone Magazine's Top 100 Album Covers' (http://rateyourmusic.com/list/fedderedder/rolling_stones_100_greatest_album_covers). After looking down the list I noticed that a large majority didn't include the artist on the cover and instead had a logo, pattern or other image. There were two albums that I was familiar with but I felt particularly stood out which were, Pink Floyd with their album 'Dark Side of the Moon' and The Velvet Underground's Andy Warhol album. The artwork is so simple and effective yet it catches the eye straight away. Between them, the records have sold over 100 million copies worldwide.

Typical of the genre
After researching influential and successful albums I looked more into album covers within the genre I was focusing on. I came across these two - Miles Kane's 'Colour of the Trap' and Jack White's 'Blunderbuss'. Both artist's are singer songwriters and their music is fairly similar to Jake Bugg's. It is evident from both of these album sleeves that typically, solo artists inside the indie/alternative genre tend to feature on their cover. Also, the colour of the artists are edited to black and white whilst quite a bright and vibrant colour features elsewhere on the cover. I quite like this and would definitely considering doing something similar on my own digipak. There are without a doubt a number of advantages to having the artist appear on the front cover of the album. For example: fans like to see their artist on the cover and it makes the record much more easily recognisable for people who know the artist but may not be aware that they're releasing a new album. Despite this, I personally prefer to have a logo or stand-out image to feature on the cover and plan to do so.



I also looked at the general layout of some digipaks within the indie/alternative to get an idea of what to include on the back and inside. From my own CD collection I came across Kasabian's second album 'Empire'.Typical of most digipaks, the case is made of hard plastic and includes an inner booklet, back cover with the tracklist on and front cover. The booklet inside folds out t feature an image of each member of the band, I quite like the idea and would consider doing something similar when creating my own digipak.