Ancillary Task: Lana Del Rey Digipack

As Lorde has never created a digipack, we cannot use her existing material as inspiration for our products. Therefore, I decided to look at Lana Del Rey’s existing material as she has the same target audience as Lorde, she is also female and creates content that conforms to the indie genre. Therefore, I decided to look at her digipacks.

The first digipack she created was for ‘Lust for Life’ the album. This album was released in July 2017. The digipack cover she created featured her iconic font saying ‘Lana Del Rey’ and the title of the album: ‘Just life’ with the parental advisory sticker in the corner. Although this sticker could be placed on the back of the album, it would appeal to her target audience of aspirers who aspire to be different and in some senses, rebel.

The key image featured on the cover of the digipack features her foregrounded against a car. The use of herself as the key image utilises celebrity endorsement to appeal to those who are also outside her target audience through her recognisable style and image (conforming to Dyer’s Star Theory). The white boarder around the image conforms to the 1950’2 retro styles that is consistently featured through her brand identity. This is continued in the iconic hairstyle and bold red lipstick she is wearing which again helps to appeal to her target audience; her iconic brand identity.

The theme of the front cover is continued through the rest of the digipack. The flower that can be seen in her hair on the front cover is further seen in the key images of the rest of the digipack. The white flower has connotations that can be linked to the songs and lyrics that are featured on the album; ‘White Mustang’ (song), ‘Wilting like a rose’ (lyric), ‘blooming’ (lyric). The use of a white filter on top of the images also continues the theme of the flower. This creates a consistency throughout her digipack.

Another feature of the digipack was the back cover that featured the names of the songs within the album. The red font that is consistent with her iconography in general and throughout the digipack is used to write the names of the songs. This challenges typical layout of the song titles of the digipack as they are typically written as one line per column. However, in this case, she has written them as a continuous line with dashes used to separate them. The key image is again consistent with the theme of the digipack, featuring the white flowers and the same location, costume and makeup  is used as that of the key image on the front cover.

How can this help me?
Overall, analysing Lorde’s digipack has taught me that the consistency of a theme throughout the product is significant. It is also effective to have props/features in the key images (in this case the white flowers) that has a symbolic meaning related to the artist/their songs. This is especially important when you have an indie audience as they will gain psychological rewards when they realise the symbolic meaning; it confirms their knowledge of the artist and strengthens their loyalty.