Digipak - Little Details

For the digipak, we needed to research all the little components that go into the design across all four panels and the spine. For this I looked closely at the album collection I had in my room - for example I examined the copyright text very closely. By having the albums in front of me I could read every word despite the fact that the text was almost microscopic. For our digipak, we need to make sure that we have all these little details in it to enable it to fit into the market of existing digipaks.

Below is a video (created on 'Animoto') of tracklistings (back panel on album). I looked at several designs and ways of structuring the tracklistings. As it is a single there will only be a few tracks to be put on the back but I looked at how albums do it. I considered factors such as the amount of space used, the structure e.g.) columns, text size, text style, images and house style on the rear cover.

What I discovered is that that there was a variety of ways that the tracklists could be displayed. For example, when looking at the 'R.E.M' cover, they covered the whole of the back using large text in capitals. Compare this with Coldplay's style seen in the albums "A rush of blood to the head" and "Viva La Vida" where the text is centred in small and detailed text which looks rather sophisticated. Where as the R.E.M cover is emphatic and in your face. So there is a wide list of approaches you can go for. The tracklistings are always in the same colour font as the name of the album which is on the front. It is very important that there is a consistent house style used in the design as all four panels have to lead on from each other. 

There is a range of ways the background of the last panel is presented. A number of them are dominated by a photograph or graphic of something specific such as the artist, which takes up the majority of the space with the tracklistings in the corner. When the tracklistings are intended on being the focus of the panel, the background is simplistic and frequently plain (as seen above in the two albums shown).




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The copyright details are also shown on ALL album covers and the CD itself as this is a notification of which record label owns the rights for the artist and prevents potential copyright. This is usually printed on the back panel and regularly on the third panel in VERY SMALL text. For example on the Jack Johnson album 'To The Sea' it says, "2010 JACK JOHNSON. The copyright in this sound recording and artwork is owned by Jack Johnson and is exclusively licensed to Universal Records, a division of UMC Recordings INC. All rights reserved. Unauthorized production, copying, hiring, lending, public performance and broadcasting is prohibited. BIEM/SABAM. Made in the EU." It simply highlights the legal points around the outside of the CD itself. This quote is generally the same sort of thing on all albums in terms of the wording.

The barcode is obviously for sales purposes. It is usually placed on the back (fourth panel). The positioning of it differs in the sense that i can be on its side or not. In terms of placement it is 9 times out of 10 along the edge hidden away as it does not carry any style or meaning for the album itself. So it is rather unimportant in terms of design. As long as we put it on there at the required size, that will be fine. As seen here there is some promotional material above it such as the record label's website etc.

Other little things that can be seen on a digipak are touches such as the label logo as seen on the Jack Johnson album which just gives it more of a branding and identity. For our album we can create a record label for this purpose or simply just use the record label that the band use - from whom we took the song for the video (The Naked and Famous)