Research - Analysis of three digipaks of the same genre

The genre of our chosen song overlaps between indie and pop. However, since our music video was independently produced with no budget, the indie style was dominant. Therefore, I am planning to use more conventions of the indie genre, because that is the image we want to create for our artist Ray Jones.

The Kooks is an indie rock band. Their digipak effectively follows the conventions of the indie style. It is a simple digipak but it contains special touches that make it look more sophisticated, like the use of red contrasting with black and white, the collection of photographs, etc. The colours are well chosen and simple, the digipak as a whole works very well and it does give some sense of casual style with individuality. 

The Script is a band very similar to out artist. Although their digipak does show some special production in the photographs used, they look all very simplistic, especially the ones with the hands. The album cover shows a picture of the band, the picture is of quality and the strong sunlight creates yellow warm tones to the image, which suits with the colour of the rest of the digipak (some sort of old yellow). The lead singer is in the foreground - which is appealing to their female audience who will like to see his face. They are all wearing black, which contrasts with the yellow tones and the sand, this graphic design is repeated throughout the digipak as they use black for their text and old yellow for the background, as well as the hands have a similar old yellow tone and the use of shadows contrasting. The use of the hands is symbolic, representing the idea of the title and possibly the concept of the album, a joint of science and faith. Use of symbolism may be popular within this genre since it sticks to minimalism. It also gives a special touch to the 'ordinary', making the simple look interesting.

Florence + the machine is an artist that also has an overlap between indie and pop. This album cover effectively shows the overlap; it has good use of setting and props, which is conventional of the pop genre, but it does not use opulent sets or props, it keeps them simple like the indie style. In addition, the digipak is not heavily stylised and it does not have a lot of 'special effects', it is consisted of two images with probably very subtle digital manipulation, and simple graphics. The digipak is also quite girly, which is appealing to the female audience, especially through the use of font and flowers. The colours black and white are neutral, very popular within the indie genre. 

After analysing these three digipaks, and the digipak of the original artist, I now can start to think about how my digipak has to look and how I am going to follow the conventions of the genre. I conclude that it would be ideal to keep the digipak simplistic, but, with some special touches that will make it look interesting and different. Any stylisation has to be subtle and suit the genre and the artist's image. I have also noticed that within this genre it is more common to have digipaks with only four panels, so I will stick with this convention. Since the genre is not so popular, it is also noticeable that artists often use their own image in the album cover, as a way of promoting themselves and familiarising their image with the public. As my artist is a completely new artist, I will preferably use a close up in the front cover, and that should also be appealing to my core audience consisted of females.