What is a Digipak?

The package that a CD comes in plays a very important role in conveying the image of the artist. It is usually a fold out pack with multiple graphics or images on each side. A digipak makes the packaging a part of the experience of owning a CD, it is more special and interesting than a regular plastic CD case. It also allows the producers to include information about the artist and their identity. Whilst a regular consumer might just download the album from iTunes, a dedicated fan might feel the need to put in that little bit extra money for a physical copy of an iconic part of the artist's history.

A four sided digipak

A six sided digipak

An eight sided digipak

There are lots of important conventions that you can find in most digipaks, throughout all genres. Below is Marina and the Diamond's 'The Family Jewels' annotated to show the popular conventions of a digipak.

Our Digipak

We made a start on our own digipaks. At first we created these:

The eye image (see what we did there? I Got my Eye on You?) is taken from an actual picture of a girl's eye (Heidi, who was originally going to be the singer) and edited to look fractured. We went for a bright, fun colour scheme and focused on simplicity. After finishing the regular cover, we decided to make a deluxe edition, which was the same but gold and a different colour scheme:

After looking at more pop digipaks, we noticed that not a lot of them had this kind of colour scheme or imagery. In keeping with the convention, we decided to focus more on what other pop albums had done. Lots of them used photography of the artists, such as Loud by Rhianna, which is almost 100% pictures of Rhianna looking sleepy. We decided to go down that route, arranging a photo shoot with Maria.

"The worst disease which can afflict executives 

in their work is not, as popularly supposed, 

alcoholism; it's egotism."

- Robert Frost