Digipak Research
Within a CD case there is visual booklet. This can include images of the artist or their band etc, song lyrics for the songs featured on the CD, a background cover displaying what order the songs are in and possibly a message from the artist to their fans.
This helps enhance the artists theme and illustrates their image. For example Ellie Gouldings digipak includes photographs of her playing the guitar and singing which reinforces her musicianship. It also includes a playlist of the tracks on the CD. The font used looks slightly handwritten and is individual for the artist, therefore people will recognise the font with that specific artist, which means it can be used on all of the artists merchandise such as posters, tshirts etc.
This background of Rihanna's album 'Good Girl Gone Bad' is quite simple and straightforward with only the artist on the front cover portraying class and elegance. Her name is in big bold turquoise letters in the centre of the page in order to show by whom the album is song. The fact that the artist name is in the middle of the page makes it very eye catching and attracts the audiences attention. Because her name stands out, it puts more emphasise on the artist herself and who she is, as the rest of the album is in black and white. The name of the album is " good girl gone bad' she has used alliterations of the letters 'G' to make it easier for the audiences to memorise the album name. The artist pose is quite sexual and appealing, which would attract a lot of male audiences. However,also females would be attracted to the album as young girls would envy and want to emulate her in the way she looks. Brighter lighting has been used round Rihanna's image in order to make her and her outfit stand out and emphasise her importance on her front cover.
The same black and white theme runs through the back cover of the CD with again a brighter colour used in Rihanna's image. The song titles of the album are in turquoise in order to make them stand out and allowing the audiences to see what songs are included in the album. The fact that a lot of black and white colour is used could be that the colour black connotes the "bad girl" and the white colour connotes the "good girl" which links in with the album name " Good Girl Gone Bad". Rihanna makes her album cover very straightforward which is associated with R&B fashion therefore we can point out that the album is part of the R&B music genre.
Conventions of DigipaksConventional digipaks often contain a booklet inside, containing lyrics of the song and information about the artist along with pictures or possibly posters. Along with lyrics, some bands/artists explain the meanings behind the songs so that fans can relate to them. Digipaks used to be the prime way that people found out about their favourite bands and even though their is information in these packs, people are far likely to use other media forms for example the Internet. So, therefore, more focus has been on the lyrics and 'Thank You's' in this booklet. Audience's and fans often want to know the lyrics so they can sing along to their favourite songs and although their available on the internet its far more personal in the booklet that is made. The Thank You pages also make the booklet more personal than on the internet as it's easy to recognise who the band are thankful too and who's helped them along their journey. Digipaks are rarely seen in comparison to past years and albums from artists as people are more likely to download them rather than buy physical forms. However, some people prefer to buy physical copies of albums and digipaks so they can collect them/keep them. Digipaks also obviously include the track list on the back to make the audience aware of the names and orders of songs. They also show the record company and show who's released the album and got copyright of the album. Also on the back is the barcode obviously and often a scan code relating to either a website or another media text. This means individuals can scan the code from their phone and be automatically directed to the link thats encoded in the scan code, creating intertexuality and enabling links between different media texts. Having this code somewhere on the digipak would mean that fans can also access other elements to the artist on the web meaning that they will create a wider fan base.
