Digipak Research - by Josh

 As part of our coursework we needed to design a digipak for our music video. This first consisted of researching album cover art in our particular genre (Dance/House). The first ones I looked at were the ones that consisted largely of graphics as opposed to one photograph. Below are some of the albums by Drum and Bass band: Pendulum.

 Despite the album art using some pictures (that of the eye in 'Hold Your Colour' and the fish in 'Immersion') the art relies heavily on graphics that surround and emphasise these photographs. I personally really like these album covers as they look stunning and are an illustration of how we are able to create beautiful art simply with a few pictures and photoshop.

 The album name 'Immersion' directly relates to the album art, for a man and a woman are submersed in the sea among many other sea creatures. The intricate and detailed art is also meant to 'immerse' us in the sense that we are drawn in by it.

 'Hold Your Colour' could have a possible relation to the cover as it is made up of many different colours and shades, as well as colour being directly drawn from the eye, which is made to draw our attention, eyes being a focus of many different types of art.
'In Silico' is actually an expression used to mean "performed on computer or via computer simulation", which relates to the computer-generated graphics on the album cover, and could have possible connotations regarding what seems to be a fetus enclosed within an egg with sperm encircling it. This could refer to how Pendulum see their work (the album) as their child, the importance they hold to it and how they have created this through computers. We can draw a comparison between 'Immersion' and 'Hold Your Colour' in the sense that they feature original images that have been heavily manipulated to enhance them, whereas 'In Silico' makes use of simpler graphics. There is a continued house style through the covers as they all make use of heavily edited computer graphics to create the covers but there is perhaps no obvious correlation between the three, i.e. no band members are featured or the same font being used.

 There is no prevalent font through the three albums, and although they do bear resemblance to one another, there appears to be no brand recognition in that respect.

  As you can see from the inside design of 'Hold Your Colour', the concept of the stream of light coming out of the eye is continued on from the cover. This also applies for the song list on the back panel. Light is also shown bursting out of a pair of hands on the design behind the CD, very similar to that of the eye and surrounding inside design. The whole design of the panels uses a similar, dark background with a green, blue and pink/purple colour palette, using white against solid black for the font so it stands our easily.

 'Hold Your Colour' was the main inspiration behind this single (Witchcraft) cover art, the use of the eye being the most noticeable feature they chose to centre both pieces on. Again, this has been heavily edited, perhaps even the eye isn't an original photograph. The reason I believe this looks much more like a single cover art rather than a whole album is because there is only one centre-point for the viewer to look at, this being the eye, which takes up a lot of the whole image with there being little else to be looked at. This differs from 'Hold Your Colour' in the sense that, despite the eye being the main focus-point, it is much smaller than the 'Witchcraft' eye and features more around the whole cover such as the roots around the eye and the bubbles rising up through the title.

  The inside art for 'Immersion' bears similar resemblance to the cover; behind the CD it looks like an empty space underwater which the CD fills up. On the left side you can see the 'thank you's' which consists of a lot of text, thus being the reason the background is kept simple with solid black and only a couple of graphics added in.

 

  The song list on the right panel above compare very strongly, for the colour palette of black and blue as well as pink/purple are carried on from the front cover. The font for the songs is the same as the album title on the front. There remain some sea creatures as well as beams of blue light from above the water along with coral amongst other rocky features along the bottom, which all feature on the cover.

 The CD art uses original images for the bubbles as well as the jellyfish. This bears strong resemblance to the other four panels as it is underwater, uses black and blue for the colours and the use of the bubbles is meant to emphasise that the viewer has just been 'immersed', thus also emphasising the album title.

 The album art above by House supergroup Swedish House Mafia is of their two albums: Until One and Until Now. Their first album (Until One) features a very simple design with formal serif text which could be representative of their plain and formal nature. Until Now on the other hand features the three band members with their iconic three circles behind their heads, perhaps striking a resemblance to the circular halos found behind Jesus Christ's head in pictures of him.

 The electronic group Nero's only album 'Welcome Reality' features futuristic graphics accompanied by the name with their unique font spread across the cover. This is typical of albums; to have the artist name in the centre of the page which becomes the main focus of the art, especially considering the artist's name is far larger than the album name (artist promotion and recognition). It also bears some resemblance to a film poster or DVD cover due to the credits at the bottom of the cover. It seems appropriate for an electronic/house group such as Nero to encorporate futuristic graphics in their cover art, since this genre often makes use of the fact that it seems modern and advanced compared to other genres.

 A possibly more mainstream dance producer, Calvin has had 3 albums, with his most recent one '18 Months' reaching number 1 in the charts. His first album makes relatively simple use of a photograph of Harris edited to give it a cartoon effect. I believe this album art to be quite effective as although it is simple, it stands our quite well, yellow and black contrasting quite differently. It does however still retain a certain techno/dance appeal with the digital font. The second album has some continuity from the first one as the picture has the same 'light-filled' glasses along with the same font. The woman along with the glasses add glamour to the art, possible a metaphor to the album title 'Ready for the Weekend', implying going out to clubs and parties, which seems appropriate since Harris's dance music is very popular amongst clubs. His latest album contrasts highly from his first two, since it doesn't feature a facial close up or the glasses, as well as the text instead featuring prominently in the middle of the cover instead of the to the side. It is, however, another relatively simple album art, with an unedited photograph with Harris sitting on the pavement, which could be described as untypical of dance album covers. An interesting aspect of this album cover is that the background features in Harris's music video for his single 'Bounce'. This is very uncommon in not just dance digipaks but also for all digipaks of every genre, since the album is a collective of lots of singles and isn't just based around one. Harris possibly decided to use this for the digipak cover as artists often want to add in a personal touch to their covers (it being a work of their art), and he may feel that the music video for 'Bounce" relates to his life or bears some resemblance to it.