Ancillary Task: Codes and Conventions of Digipacks

To help me understand the codes and conventions of digipacks, I have decided to research existing products within the indie genre. This will give me a better understanding of what to include on mine when I create my own product. As Lorde Doesn’t have a digipack, I decided to research into Lana Del Rey’s digipack that she released for ‘Born to Die’.

The layout:
The slip case: The overall layout of the digipack is different to the conventions ‘cross template’. She featured a slip case that featured the cut out of ‘Lana Del Rey’ which showed the album cover through it. The back of the slip case was a continuation of the sky theme she utilised throughout the rest of the marketing campaign for Born to Die. Although Lana typically conforms to the typically marketing techniques as she has a very simplistic style, in this case, the addition of the slip case continues to be very simplistic but also allows the audience to instantly recognise the digipack as hers through the use so synergy of the imagery throughout her campaign. This is assisted by her iconic font that has been utilised to complete this.  Also, the change creates individualism and creates hype surrounding the digipack.

The digipack:
The rest of the digipack includes a three rectangular shape template meaning there are six faces including three sides, the front cover, the back and the CD holder.

The front cover: The front cover utilises the same imagery as the magazine poster that was created for this campaign and instead of having information about the album it says ‘Born to Die’. This again creates a consistency throughout the advertisement campaign for this album which can be recognised through the stencil cut out of the slip case.

The CD:

The digipack has a side in which the CD tray would go. This side has a blue background and has a long shot of Lana within the circle so when the CD is in the tray, the key image can’t be seen behind it. There is also a design for the CD itself, which again is a continuation of the theme throughout the rest of the digipack. Also, there is institutional information featured on the CD including the signature font saying ‘Lana Del Rey’ and the name of the album ‘Born to Die’. There is also the name of the record label on it.



As well as analysing Lana’s digipack, I thought I would look at different designs for digipacks that are often used:

The final template is the digipack template that is most commonly used in real life examples:

However, as I am creating my product within the indie genre, I could challenge codes and conventions of the digipacks as my target audience would appreciate it and chose a different layout. The third digipack I like as there are more sides in which you can fill with images of the artist. This would allow me to create a greater relationship with the audience as I can conform to Dyer’s star theory that utilising more coverage of the artist allows the audience to connect with them. 


Overall how has this helped me?
After analysing the codes and conventions of digipacks I have learnt:
• There has to be a clear consistency throughout thee digipack in terms of the colour scheme and images used. It is also important for the digipack to have some sort of correlation between the images used on the poster and video also.
• I now know that there is more than one type of template I can use to create my digipack which I will be able to choose once I have taken the images for it. I am able to use an alternative template as the indie audience enjoy difference and it would appear as a more unique style to the typical template.