Digipak Conventions

The conventions of digipak design remain basically the same from genre to genre or design to decide. Digipaks typically consist of a book-style gatefold card or paperboard stock outer binding, with one or more plastic trays capable of holding a CD or DVD attached to the inside. 

The following digipaks relate to my alternative genre.

This digipak is for the album A Different Kind of Fix by Bombay Bicycle Club.
The photo shows the outer cover revealed and the lower section of the photo shows the inside cover opened.
the illustration spreads across the front then filling over to the back cover where the song list is displayed. The illustration is done by the same artist who does their other album covers, to their listeners this style is familiar and associated with the bands music, portraying the band iconography. 
The colours are continued through the inside covers. The illustration on the CD its self is the same as the pattern in the 'brain' creating coherence across the product. 
The font is bold and clearly stated the album name, underneath the Bombay Bicycle Club logo is shown. On the back cover  underneath the song list their are production details as well as a bar code. The differences in this digipak compared to a conventional one would be its layout as it is not 3 fold and it does not contain a lyrics sheet.


This digipak is for the album Fleet Foxes by Fleet Foxes.
The cover is a painting of an old village scene although a similar style was not used in other album covers the colours remain muted and very similar to their other album covers. The painting on the front spreads to the back slightly showing a small section of it on the back cover. Also on the front there is the artists name and the album name as one, this is the only iconography shown. The font used is also used on the back for the list of songs however for the songs the colour is yellow instead of white on a black background, the style is also reminiscent to the time the painting is set, perhaps medieval or tudor. The song names run into each next line irrespective whether each word is finished, reflecting the different style of the music as well as the way the design is set out. Details of the production and barcode are also seen at the bottom left hand corner. The black background is continued into the inside of the of the digipak, a colour gradient (using similar colours that are in the painting seen on the front) is shown starting with white in the middle spreading out to yellow then to a brownish red at the edges. However this colour gradient is only seen through the paisley design. the design also clashes with style in the front displaying separate cultures. The CD its self is dark grey and continues the paisley design but in black. This digipak also comes with a lyric sheet in what looks like aged paper to fit in with the moor retro feel to the overall design.

This is the digipak design for the album Nights Out by Metronomy.
This digipak is 3 fold and opens up revealing the middle. The front cover is an illustrative depiction of a man looking up stood in front of car. behind him their is a twilight view of a town and 2 men sat behind the car looking out at it. The image on the back of the cover is the same image but from the perspective looking up at the 2 men leaning against the car. A large depiction of a neon sign is shown revealing what the fist man was looking up at, this sign is Metronomy's logo in coloured neon form, fans of the band will also notice that the people featured are the band members themselves. The back also shows the production details at  the bottom, the barcode however is located in the top right hand corner vertically. The spine of the digipak sates the band and the album name on a black background.  The middle fold also has a black background in which their colourful Metronomy logo is situated. On the other side of the digipak it shows the CD in the middle with a white Metronomy logo on it and two sides either side all of which is black. On the right side in small spread out text it states the album name only. On the left hand side it contains a lyric sheet with the album cover on it, behind this printed on the case is a list of all the song in the album. The main focus in the design of the digipak is the art work, this contains iconography but not in an obvious way. The unique style also is reflected through the design.

In these digipaks, the design does not give away too much information about the band or songs through iconography, and even through they all loosely fit in the same genre the styles are different making the albums harder to search for if you were looking to purchase an album in general from these specific genres. The audiences for these albums are niche so the audience will purposefully go out to buy their album, meaning they do not market to the general public. 
I like the use of artist work in these and has inspired me to perhaps include my own. The colours also stand out to me with ones i would want to use, however the black inside covers make it quite dark and not the feel I want to achieve in my design.