Analysis of 3 Digipks that Relate to Our Genre

Good news - I found three digipaks in my house that all relate to our genre.

1. Arctic Monkeys - Favourite Worst Nightmare 

It's a good thing I happened to own this digipak cos I only own four CDs and this one is of the artist The Jewellers most resemble: the Arctic Monkeys. As you can see the digipak is based around the design of a house. 

The front cover is the front of a house and when you open up the side panels you see that they are the windows of the house. This reminds me of one of the songs on the album called 'This House is a Circus', if it is not based on that song then I have no idea why this is the theme of the digipak. Inside one of the side panels there is a booklet which is filled with various dark arty pictures and on the back has track listing, thank yous and information on who the music was written by. 

The booklet that was inside the digipak

There is no sign of the band on this album as instead of photos of themselves they have opted for graphic design and art. Personally I think it looks pretty cool but thought the booklet was pretty pointless. The Arctic Monkeys relate to The Jewellers in terms of both sound and audience for obvious reasons. Our song was their song originally and we are both young indie rock bands appealing to people between the ages of 16-28 mainly.

2. Muse - The Resistance

This digipak belongs to my brother who is a 20 year old male who likes rock music so he would definitely fit into our target audience. Therefore the Muse digipak felt like a relevant one to review. It has a number of things in common with the Arctic Monkeys digipak. For starters, they are not on the front cover which has a graphic instead. In contrast, they do appear on the back, though it is a long shot that is quite blurry. Again this lack of spotlight on the artist's appearance puts the emphasis on to the music, a common genre convention in rock music. Like Favourite Worst Nightmare, this is quite a simple digipak, just some black and white photos, a CD and a booklet, it was also very small and light. I liked the Muse booklet much more and think they found a much more effective use for it. They had nice graphics that matched the album cover along with lyrics for each song. If we had to make a booklet I would want to make one like Muse's, I thought it was really well made.

The booklet that came with the digipak.

3. Bruce Springsteen - The Promise

Ok, so I know Bruce Springsteen's target audience is considerably older than ours but 1. It was the only other actual 'digipak' in the house and 2. He is still rock music and it was a very well made and slightly different digipak. So I thought it was worth reviewing. 

This digipak had a different structure to the other two, the booklet was attached to one of the side panels so as you opened the digipak, you opened the booklet. It also had an additional panel in the middle that could be turned over. The reason for this could have been that there were two CDs so an additional panel was needed to house them.

The booklet that came with the digipak.

As Bruce Springsteen is aimed at a much older audience (this CD belonged to my parents) you can see noticable differences between the Muse and Arctic Monkeys digipaks and this one. An example of which is the colour scheme. Bruce's one is all black and white and the fonts he used are of an old type writer style. This appeals to an older audience who remember and appreciate this old style. Whereas Arctic Monkeys and Muse contrast their dark colours with bright and colourful graphics, Bruce sticks to black and white photography.