Digipak Introduction

Consistency and branding are important with Digipaks, as this is what will ultimately attract the customer. A successful digipak includes:

- Unification with the content and message that you wish to portray to the audience. With this connection, the audience can feel a sense of belonging to the artist, forming a relationship. This could be said to be stronger with fangirls, but it can be formed with anyone if the branding directs an audience member directly.

- Information and visual hierarchy: the main image is the first thing that the audience will focus on, therefore it should be impactful. After this has attracted the attention of the audience member, they will look over the rest of the graphic and take in the connotations and feelings portrayed by the artist.

- Your graphic needs to have impact so it is important. As your CD will be competing alongside many other CDs, yours needs to have something special and original to make it stand out so record labels will take an interest in your music and style.

- The CD needs to be appropriate for the audience and the environment. Not reaching your target audience will mean that sale targets and recognition will not be achieved.

The golden era of cover art spans the early/mid 60s to the early 80s, just before the music video was introduced. 12 inch, Long play (Now commonly known as vinyl) and LPs all featured cover art. The cover art should display the artist's intent musically and artistically.

Some bands were so recognisable to only have a logo. A good example is The Rolling Stones, with the cheeky tongue logo. This key piece of iconography enabled them to be recognised even without the band's name being there. This worked well for The Rolling Stones considering their widespread success.

There was a re-birth in the 1990s for CD covers, however towards the end of the century digital downloads were starting to be introduced, which has ultimately lead to the death of the CD.