Conventions and analysis of digipaks

Analysis of Digipaks

What is a digipak?

A digipak is a style of CD which is packaged in a unique way in order to promote/advertise that artist. This style of CD tends to be used for special editions, and premium packaging.











Arcade Fire - The Suburbs (Digipak)

 This band orginally originated from Montreal, and are an indie-rock band. It consists of 7 members and have played all around the world, including headling Glastonbury and Coachella Festival.

There are eight different versions of album artwork to 'The Suburbs', which was created by Gabriel Jones.

 The main front cover of this digipak consists of a retro car parked infront of an ideal suburban house. The band has its name written in small letering in the right hand corner, making the main image stand out more. This album goes with the title of the album, as it features conventions of suburban elements. The colouring of the images are filtered in a vintage effect, to go with the idea that suburban houses were stereotyped with the 70's.

 This image was taken during a road trip around various suburbs in America. It features "The Suburbs" boldly placed on the right hand side, making it obvious to the audience.

On this part of the digipak there are song lyrics from the album contrasting against a filtered background of suburban houses, with a red tint in the corner. All of these colours are quite neutral and earthy, connoting with the stereotype put across from indie-rock bands.






Mac Demarco - Salad Days (Digipak)

 Mac Demarco is a Candian singer-songwriter who has fallen into the 'blue wave/slacker-rock' genre. His digi-pak features him on the front in a simplistic format, wearing a typical white basic hat and blue top. This digi-pak follows the simplistic conventions very well, which is what makes it effective, especially to the specific target audience. With the indie-rock genre, laid-back clothing/costumes are highly noticable. This is because they wish to go against the stereotypical mainstream conventions which many other genres follow.


 The shading on these pictures has been used to create a better effect which entices the audience into buying the digipak. This is because the fan-base will be made up of Indie-rock listeners, and will like the basic, retro and vintage effects highly put out from this album.

The typography which is shown on the front of the digi-pak is unconventional, however effective since it is like basic hand-writing. This suggests that this artist is out of the ordinary and is trying something new, which the target audience will like as they are stereotyped as following new and different conventions.

The track listings do not follow specific numbers either, they are layed out on the left hand side of the background in white colouring, which makes this digi-pak effective.