DIGIPAK/ALBUM COVER RESEARCH

Arfa Shah Candidate number: 4739

INTRODUCTION One of our ancillary tasks is to create a digipak for our chosen song in order to market it and use skills such as designing, editing and photography. My task was to research 3 digipak’s that are from the indie genre. However, it was hard to find a digipak for a indie band in HMV owing to the fact that digipak’s are more popular with mainstream genre’s such as pop and RnB. For example Katy Perry’s new album “Teenage Dream” was the latest to release as a digipak. Due to the limited availability of indie digipak’s, I used my initiative and decided to analyse album covers in order to note key conventions that will be useful to us when designing our digipak. I analysed the album covers of : Franz Ferdinand, Razorlight and Vampire Weekend.

The font is simple and quite big however to make it striking the band name is coloured in a dark golden. This may have been done in order to make the band’s name stand out in contrast to the black and white background.KEY FEATURE: Band name stands out.

The logo of their record label “Domino” is featured on the front cover in the bottom right hand corner. KEY FEATURE: Inclusion of record label logo.

Black, white and yellow colour scheme that makes the album stand out and makes it visually appealing. This colour scheme is also used on their first studio album.KEY FEATURE: Colour scheme

The band are featured in the front cover. The band member in the foreground could be the lead singer owing to the fact that’s he stands out the most whereas the other members are in the background. All band members are wearing the same clothes in order to convey unity.KEY FEATURE: Band included on cover, same clothes.

FRANZFERDINAND

The name of the band is bold, large and stands out against a white background. It is above the images of the band members which suggests that the band’s name is the most important form of recognition.KEY FEATURE: The font and colour of the band’s name The band’s

posture and image is very indie. All the band are wearing at least one piece of black clothing against white clothing for example the band member on the far left is wearing predominantly black with one white t shirt. Also, the band’s posture is very cool and unique, each band member has adopted a different pose.KEY FEATURE: Different poses, correlating clothes..

The colour scheme is similar to Franz Ferdinand’s album in the use of contrasting colours. However, no vibrant colours are used on this album colour which suggests that black and white is the band’s scheme. KEY FEATURE: Colour scheme

The band’s name is spaced out, bold and in white. This is another example of how the band’s name is the most important part of the album.KEY FEATURE: Band name, font, colour.

The band are not included on the cover of the album. I think they should’ve been included on the front cover of their first album in order to establish themselves as a band and introduce themselves to the music industry. KEY FEATURE: Absence of band on cover. Must include band members on our cover.

The colour scheme is very warm and inviting however it has a gothic undertone due to the golden chandelier contrasting against the band’s name in white. KEY FEATURE:Use of contrasting soft colours

VAMPIRE WEEKEND

CONCLUSION

From my research, I’ve found that all albums have a contrasting colour scheme that either makes the band members stand out or the band’s name. I’ve also noted that all band members are either wearing the same clothes or are wearing one part of the colour scheme. Also, on two albums the band members each have different poses therefore for our digipak cover we could include all the techniques stated above.