As I have shown a more typical example of a digipak, I feel I should analyse one with a more abstract design, to get as broad a range of inspiration as possible. The album here is 4x4=12 by Deadmau5. The intentions of the artist are not clear, and it is this sense of wanting to know what it’s all about that would, in a shop, entice people to carry on reading about the CD until they come to a decision about whether or not to buy it. The first obvious elephant in the room is the neon mouses face set against black in the centre of the cover. Even as a simple image on it’s own, it’s a very cool and slick design that could be used as a symbol for the group. It gives off little information about the songs it holds, but in a way clues the audience into the fact that the songs are electronic. Looking at the robot like face, one wouldn’t imagine that the CD would be full of acoustic music, but more of an electronic, modern nature, which it is.
There is a strong digital vibe, reinforced by the numbers both in the artist name and the album name. Even the equation is wrong, the cover is confusing, however it’s this that will make a potential buyer question it’s motives and in turn maybe purchase the CD to shed some light on the subject. This is personally exactly what happened in my case I actually saw this album on the shelf and had heard about Deadmau5 before, but I thought that I was missing out on something, and that if I listened to the music everything about the album would make sense. This is perhaps a risky marketing ploy, however they seem to have hit the sweet spot with presenting just enough disjointed information to keep people guessing.
It takes a lot of thought to make something so twisted work, so I’m not sure if we should travel a route in which there is such a small room for error. We would either get it spot on or fail.
The back cover is similarly minimalistic, giving away nothing else but the names of the songs and copyright information. The mouse’s head logo is again repeated in the corner, something which I took a liking to: using smaller instances repeated in the digipak to keep its contents related. The fact that only two colours are used looks very slick in my opinion. Green and black has actually been quite popularly with digital culture in recent years, being the colours of many popular cars, and even the colours frequently used by Microsoft, even the games console Xbox 360. Whilst it may not register on the spot, I feel this colour relation would assist in appealing to a teenage audience, maybe aimed at the higher years as those are who come into contact with many digital applications and appliances on a regular basis.
Whole case is actually made of card with no inserts or attachments, folded in two places to make a sort of thick leaflet with a leaflet stuck inside. It gives a very no-nonsense feel: ‘here’s the music, play it.’ It seems almost arrogant to simply display merchandise on the first cover, but I like this style. Arrogance is perhaps the wrong word: ‘to the point’ would be better. Personally I’m impatient and want to get to the best bits, so this works in my favour. There is a strong graphic feel as even the merchandise is centred on the mouse head, with yet another more colourful version of the logo next to it. The fact they have merchandise indicates a successful artist or group with a big fan-base.
As we are working with a single song of a group who is no-where near as popular, a more humble approach is definitely needed. The graphic look is wonderful and this could easily be translated in our on designs.
This is what the buying would be looking for, the CD and information about the artist. The CD takes very similar concepts from the cover artwork, but the accompanying biography is what would grab the audience. Although he is revealing a paragraph of information about himself, his face is covered by yet again, another mouse head. It is this sense of mystery and a hidden figure that would trigger a buyer to find out more about his songs and personal life, most likely leading to another purchase. To fit with the colour scheme, a black and white photograph is used. He is shown in jeans and a shirt in a shopping centre, hardly attire you would expect to see a successful artist in. This helps to relate to the audience and establish more of a connection with the listener.
We wouldn’t need to take such an elusive approach, but at the same time, neither of these CD’s has shown the artist face, so we may not have to do this in any inserts we would include in the digipak.
Here is the album completely folded out. It’s composed quite nicely and evenly. The images on the left and right help to balance each other around the CD. This is a great design all round, and whilst we should take elements from it, it would be risky to try something like this to such a degree; we should focus on using more typical, mainstream designs rather than trying to re-write the rules of advertising.
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