CD Digipaks and Album Artwork

A CD digipak is a modern, stylish alternative to the standard CD Jewel Case. They are a custom printed card packaging that can hold one or more CDs. CD Digipaks give a product an expensive professional look and feel.
Originally, they were only seen as limited edition products. However, due to improvements in CD production and packaging printing techniques, Digipaks are now available at much lower prices.
The most common CD Digipaks is the 4 panel Digipak which opens like a book, shown here :




However 6 panel CD Dipipaks are also very popular, providing a larger canvas for CD artwork and text information about the CD.
In this post I will be analysing two CD albums, firstly Currents by Tame Impala.
This album was not the band's first release - by the time it came out in 2015, the band had already enjoyed success with their previous albums and thus had built a large fanbase. This probably accounts for the fact that they did not need to have a picture of themselves on the front cover - their previous success means they are able to do something different with their album's cover art. They also were able to write the band's name in quite small font which is subtly written on the top left corner of the front cover. This builds a star image for the band as it shows that they are already a popular, established band. The psychedelic picture is 70s inspired, which corresponds very well with the band's retro, 70s/80s inspired sound. In this way the cover art of this album conveys the type of music that it most likely includes - this is one of the purposes of a front cover of a CD digipak.



All the singles released from the album had similar artwork used to promote them - characterised by bold colours and psychedelic patterns which were inspired by the way a gas or liquid travels around an object. The picture shown above is the cover art for one single off the album, called 'Cause I'm a Man'



The second album cover I will be analysing is Beyonce's self titled album, Beyoncé.



This front cover is incredibly simple and bold. Released in 2013, it was the singer's 11th album. At the time of release Beyoncé was one of the biggest popstars in the world (and still is). This means that all her album needed to sell itself was one single word, the artist's She did not need to use any complicated or symbolistic cover art - instead this album employs bold, large and simple font to attract your attention. The completely black background makes her name stand out starkly, drawing the consumer's attention to it.  In my opinion this album's front cover serves the purpose of adding to Beyoncé's star image. It's lack of detail shows how well known and successful she already is as a music artist.






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Similar Media Products

This week we conducted research on music artists of a similar genre to our chosen artist - Joni Payne - and studied their music videos, looking for similarities and differences between them. To do this we decided the genre of the song Hold Ya, which we are using for our music video, is alternative pop. We then used Spotify and YouTube to research different artists of the same genre and their music videos, analysing the use of camera, props, sets, costumes and more. Each person in our group studied a different artist and looked at 2-3 videos each. Personally, I looked at the solo artist Jorja Smith. She is similar to Joni Payne in that she is also a female solo singer whose songs are a similar style of soulful pop with jazzy beats. The results of our findings are recorded in the Prezi below : We found various aspects that were present in all 11 videos that we researched - such as lots of close-up and tracking shots, minimal makeup and a lip-syncing element.
Read more

Evaluation Question 4 - Who would be the audience for your media product?

Image
'Who would be the audience for your media product?' Sean, Vova and myself came up with various questions to ask people of different age groups in order to find out who the audience for our thriller would be. The above video is these interviews compiled together. Also, I created a fake Instagram account for our ideal audience member. He is 17 years old, enjoys films -  especially those of the action thriller genre -  plays sports, and has a fairly liberal set of values in that he is supportive of gender equality and thus would want to see a thriller with a woman in a powerful main role - this is shown by his Instagram account as he posted a photo supporting International Women's Day. Also, he posted a photo of the movie poster for 'Lucy', an action thriller that features a strong female lead, and stated that it is one of his favourite thrillers.
Read more

Analysis of the film poster for 'Alien' (1979)

Image
‘Alien’ is a 1979 horror/science fiction film about a crew member of a space merchant vessel who is attacked by a mysterious life form which emerges later on to hunt down the rest of the crew one by one. The target audience for this film would be an older demographic due to the scary nature of the film which makes it unsuitable for children. Therefore this poster has to make it clear what genre this film is and has to attract the target audience of teenagers and adults who enjoy a good scare. In my opinion, the film poster for ‘Alien’ does this very well. Firstly, the poster for this film includes the iconic tagline, ‘in space no one can hear you scream.’ This chilling sentence automatically establishes the terrifying tone and genre of the film -  full of fear and death -  and creates a lot of suspense, making the audience eager to watch the film. The predominant colours in the poster are green and black which are very effective. Green lighting and mist is comin...
Read more