Existing Material Research - Digipak

Textual analysis of a Digipak-

As I found from my research, Digipaks are an alternative to the standard jewel case and usually have extra content such as a gallery, commentary or DVD material.
I chose to use The Clash’s London Calling 25^th anniversary Digipak as it has links with The King Blues genre, being anti-establishment in their attitudes. The style of the album art is interesting as it closely mimics an Elvis Presley CD, being a black and white image with the text ‘London Calling’ in the same font, colour and positioning as ‘Elvis Presley’ on his album. This link was created due to the controversy that Elvis caused in his early days by shaking his iconic pelvis, mirroring the controversy caused by being against the flow of the system, this is further supported by the imagery itself. The image of a guitar being smashed in performance. It is arguable that Elvis was ‘punk’ in his day. Similar to what the clash were aiming for during theirs.

The Clash have clearly gone for a very simple design, regardless of the link to Elvis. This simplicity is characteristic of the genre, similar to the king blues, in which less is more. The minimalism is equal to their view about possessions and money. With punk music videos and promotional material, imagery tends to focus on performance, which The King Blues, The Clash, Rise Against and many others tend to do.

Arctic Monkeys digipak

This album cover is a photo transferred onto the digipak, although it is simple, it is very effective. The album name isn’t shown on the album cover but usually digipaks are named the same as the band. It looks like the colours have been dulled down a bit which makes the ‘arctic monkeys label stand out. The album cover shows the whole band and the mirrored effect adds a bit more to the cover instead of it just being a normal photo. The album name is only shown on the back of the digipak and the side. The back of the digipak is very plain and it has no image on it, only the list of tracks and the band name. They band obviously want to keep it very simple and quite plain. There aren’t any bright colours used, it is a lot of the same colour which is the deep red and that’s what the text on the back is to keep with the theme. None of the band members are looking at the camera or showing their face much, they are looking at each other or downwards. It is a natural photo in a natural environment and not posed.