R&P Post 18: Researching Digipaks!

Hello and welcome back to another research and planning post! In this post I will be discussing my research into digipaks and their forms and conventions. Enjoy!

What is a Digipak?
A digipak is an alternative to CD jewel cases (rigid packaging for CDs, DVDs and other types of optical media), and is a categorised as a style of optical disc packaging. Digipaks consist of a printed card packaging which is able to hold one or more CDs, that are held in place by separate plastic trays which are glued into the digipak.

Below you can see a typical layout for how a digipak is presented:

Forms and conventions of Digipaks:

• The front and back panels are the main 'promoters' of the CD and are heavily used to draw in customers, persuading them to buy the CD.
• The inside of the digipak is used to store information and extra things to do with the artist/song/album including pictures of or relating to the artist and lyrics to the songs on the CD.
• The folds of the digipak fold around the plastic case which secures the CD in place and makes sure that it is not damaged or lost.
• On the front of the digipak, the name of the artist and their album/song can be found and there will usually be a large, eye-catching picture on this part of the digipak, in order to entice more people to buy the CD.
• On the back panel of the digipak you will find a list of the songs by the artist/of the artist's album, the record label of the company who the artist is signed to, a barcode to buy the CD and also any extra information to do with the artist.
• In the inside of the digipak you will find the plastic holder for the actual CD itself. Often today, these plastic holders are made to be transparent which enables more album artwork to then be created behind this plastic holder, making the digipak stand out more and attract more customers. Inside you can also find extra information concerning the artist/album/song, such as extra album artwork, song lyrics and personal messages.

Digipak Example:

Above you can see a picture of a digipak created for the band Alt J's single 'Matilda'. This CD is selling as an EP meaning that it has different versions of the one single plus other extra tracks. Alt J are an English indie rock band and this is what the digipak here is trying to advertise. The front panel shows the name of the band and just underneath this is the title of their single. This panel has a black background but the words seem to have been placed on top another picture, making them appear fiery and mysterious, hinting at the band's indie style of music. Then at the top of the digipak, the middle panel and top right panel show pictures of outer space and stars, giving a sense that this artist and their music is quite literally 'out of this world'. This theme of outer space conveys the genre of the artist across to the consumer because this theme connotes a sense that this music and the artist is much more different to any thing else, again suggesting the genre of indie music.

What this tells me is that when creating my own digipak within my group for our artist, we need to make it represent what the artist is about and what genre their music falls into. This will make it clearer for our target audience on what our song is actually about and thus entice them more into buying it. As well as this, for the front panel of our digipak we will need to ensure that we have a strongly eye-catching image that will attract people to buy the CD and this will also need to be the case for the back panel too, because these are the two most important panels of the digipak since they are the ones that people see the most.