DIGIPACK ANALYSIS

Laura Mulvey theory suggests that ‘visual pleasure and narrative cinema’ identify voyeurism and fetishistic. An example of over objectified artists include Rhianna, in her music video; Stay she is seen in a bath tub in one of the scenes. This portrays her in a sexualized manor. Due to Rhianna using the colours red, that are linked with love and affection, the male audience have to be considered. Her physical appearance comes across as very sexy, not only can we see the red lipstick but we see her bare body, this combined creates a sexual interest and will appeal widely to a male audience.

• This is Rhianna's decoupage called Loud. The most noticeable feature of the digipack is the use of the colour red, which connotes sexual desire and romance.

• The use of roses adds to the symbolism of love, which is the general theme in most of Rhianna's songs

• This allows for the audience to understand the artists purpose.

• The font is simple because Rhianna is a popular figure, so they focused on the picture of her rather than her name, to show her good looks. 'Loud’ which is what the album for her song ‘stay’ is, contrasts what the two words connote. ‘Stay’ shows vulnerable soft connotations because of the terms it is normally said when begging for someone to be with you. Whereas ‘Loud’ is a word describing something which usually connotes to being a bad thing “It’s too loud” thus giving a complete word clash.

• The choices of the images make Rhianna to be aesthetically pleasing person, as it focuses on her lips which makes out she is giving the audience a seductive feel.

Intertextuality: the bed of roses connotes with the film ‘American Beauty’

• The CD image is totally different, contrasting with the cover of the album, the disk is a soft gentle flower, possibly showing Rhinanna’s soft innocent side, whereas the covers show this strong image of Rhianna.

• The inside of the digipack has Rihanna lying in a bed of roses, this is a stereotypical image which reflects romance, giving the audience an insight into what they expect from the album

• The images on the digipack are strong powerful images which portray Rhianna as a tough lady, with possibly a bit of attitude, yet reflects romance as the roses connote love. There is still a sense of calm gentleness about it as the digipack is opened up to see the rose pictures on the disk and inside of the case.

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The images on each part of this Digipack show the artist using different angles such as close ups, mid-shots and also shots of the artist that aren’t face on like side shots etc. With this Digipack it identifies the artist with the use of her face on the front cover.

• The second Digipack I will be analysing is Ellie Goulding’s ‘The Writer’:

• The colours used in this Indie Pop Artists Digipack are washed out softened colours, such as pinks, whites and greens.

• In contrast to the back and front covers of the CD, the image inside the Digipack of the artist in the studio, uses rich colours of gold's and black, which is different to the softened colours throughout which I think emphasizes the warmth the artist has in the studio.

• The font used is a feminine long handed calligraphy font that gives the Digipack a gentle, elegant feeling to it. Also with the font, a white strip is behind it making the font stand out against the soft coloured background. The graphical style represents the album as being a folky, laid backer singer songwriter feel. The font being long handed gives the idea of it being like a breeze in the wind.

• Another female artist that has inspired me is Colbie Caillat. This is her digipack for her album ‘Breakthrough’.

• The colours used on this Digipack are very bold and summery, like Ellie Goulding’s. The use of bright colours have been softened to emphasize a girly, light hearted feeling. The use of yellows, greens, browns and blue mostly dominate this Digipack.

• The fonts used on this Digipack is a font that is very girly and could be described as looking handwritten which gives the idea that she has contributed largely to writing this album. Once again the colours of the font are very gentle and use the colour white which goes with the outfit of the artist.

• The images used on this Digipack easily identify the artist and have different images of her on the front and back cover plus on the inside. The angles used on this Digipack are close-ups and the artist is wearing white clothing that gives a peaceful, gentle look.

• To conclude with my Digital Analysis, I have learnt that with indie pop artists they show strong conventions of the indie pop genre. From analysing the fonts I have realised a similarity in the calligraphy, which is handwritten and letters such as ‘L’ are looped to create a fast flow rhyme . Furthermore the fonts are all made to stand out on each of the Digipack by either using bright colours such as a white colour so that it can be eye-catching and attract the target audience.

• I chose Benjamin Francis Leftwich album cover because I like the delicate illustrations and the two children standing back to back on a cloud. The colour schemes are organic.

•This is the album cover for 'Last smoke before the snow storm’. Like many other indie albums covers it includes and aspect of hand drawn/painted effect on the main image. Another convention of indie albums covers represented here is the lack of images of the artist. Many recent indie album covers don't include images of the artist, this relates to the rebellious aspect of the indie genre, as most other genres include artist images as the main focus point. The CD artwork matches the front cover in terms of colour. They also include the same style of font. The font used is a very old fashioned one, it is elegant which also relates to the hand drawn effect of the images used in the cover and others like it.