Digipak Research: Rihanna Intro

Here we have two examples of Pop music artist Rihanna's Digipaks. Both are for Two different albums of hers released at different times. The first album 'Talk that Talk' released in 2011 attempts to show Rihanna in a more 'bad girl' vibe. As the images are shown in black and white creating an edgy sense to her style and charisma. The images used, for example, of her smoking add to the rebellious persona she is trying to convey through to her audience. Finally, the graphic images of newspapers plastered all over the CD with 'Rihanna' in bold portraying her as a large star, and a famous icon. It emphasizes her star image to the audience.

This next Digipak of hers is from the album 'LOUD' released a year later in 2010. This album is much more feminine and sexualised. There is a great emphasis on the colour red in this digipak, shown through her red hair and the roses. The colour red could symbolise passion and love, which makes sense as this album includes many upbeat, pop, love songs. The close ups on her face in two panels are very sensual and intimate, allowing us to really see Rihanna and the emotion she wants us to feel with this album.

What is a Digipak?

A digipak is almost like an extended version of an album cover. Quite often digipaks are used to sell special editions of the CD as it is a multi panel cover that holds the CD within it and generally other interesting pull outs such as a lyrics sheet and band or artist images.

These are some interesting examples of different types of digipak layouts. The more panels on the digipak the more the artist has to fit into it. Many artists use panels to portray interesting images related to the album cover that create a scene. This scene generally represents the genre of the music and the artist and will say something about the artist. For example in Rihanna's digipak for LOUD she has many panels portraying images of her being sensual, appealing to the male gaze theory.

The most typical features of a digipak that you would find include a main front image, which is sometimes the same as the image for the album. A back panel with a new image related to the album. The name of the album, which can either be the title of a featured song, or a completely new name. The artists name, a bar code, the title of the album down the spine of the digipak, a lyric sheet with the words to all the songs. A typical colour scheme that can be pointed out, usually conveying some sort of emotion. The actual CD itself, production company and information and a record label logo.