Digipak Research

I have discovered that the digipak is essential in making an artist successful because audiences will only buy an album if it is visually pleasing. The digipak is the CD cover, the album cover back and front and the leaflet inside. I found out that all album covers are unique in many different ways, even though the ones which I have researched are within the indie music genre. There are some which include photography and others which are more of an illustrative take by using an artistic look. Also there are some which are a mixture of both of these styles. 

Visually I have discovered, from researching different album covers from the indie music genre, that they are all very bright and vivid in colour tone and saturation. This has led me to the realisation that they produce bright coloured album covers because it makes them more striking and eye-catching- making the audience feel more attracted to the album cover. Also I have found out that the cover is more focused on the visual image due to it conventionally filling the cover, rather than a large title describing the album name. This allows the audience to be interested by the image when looking for new music for their collections, rather than seeing the band name/album name and not buying the album due to this.

In addition, I have discovered that the album cover allows the band/artist to build a visual image, which is present all over their other albums e.g. Tame Impala always use a similar colour palette of purples, pinks, greens, reds and oranges over all of their albums but also they have an illustrative/artistic effect on their album covers because it represents their music.

There is a lot of freedom when deciding on a concept for my album cover because there are no serious concise rules, however one thing which will need to be followed is the fact most albums conventionally have a large image covering the entire album cover and then have the band/artist name and album name in a small font. Similarly, I have discovered that the album cover has some kind of relation to the music itself within the album - making it all relate. This is a clear convention which applies to most album covers from a variety of different genres. 

Also the back of the album covers are usually very simplistic making the front of the album the main point of focus for the audience. The back of the album usually has the titles of the songs which are present within the album and some kind of bright background. From researching different digipaks, I have discovered that the leaflet usually has some kind of photography piece on the leaflet, to ensure the audience gets a visual representation of the band/artist - to make the digipack more interesting, leading to them buying it.