Digipak Research and Design

For my Ancillary task, I have started to create a digipak for the band's debut song

I researched Digipaks on the internet, and this is what I discovered:

• Digipaks typically consist of a gatefold (book-style) paperboard or card stock outer binding, with one or more plastic trays capable of holding a CD or DVD attached to the inside.

• Digipak-style packaging is often used for CD singles or special editions of CD albums

Conventions of a Digipak

The outer packaging of a Digipak is made out of card and the inner packaging is made of clear plastic. Digipaks are designed to fold into a square case. some have pull out panels, whereas others are simple 4 panel packs. 

The front and back panels are the main panels of the Pack, and server to draw in customers through promoting the CD. The front and back panels should contain the most information about the band, such as the name of the band, the Album name, the track lists, and an Interesting main image.

The inside panels are usually more subtle than the outside panels as these are only seen once the digipak has been purchased.

Example Digipak

I decided I would go with a minimalistic style for my digipak, as it fits well with the new trend of minimalism that is appearing within advertising. I researched some minimalistic Digipak examples.

I particularly liked the way that this digipak was designed. The images on the front and back panels cover the entire panels and the text is applied over the top of them. I chose to use this idea in my digipak. 

 This image shows my draft back panel.  My image fills the entire panel, following the same convention as the mumford and sons Digipak. I feel like this gives a pleasing aesthetic to the panel, and makes it very eye catching to look at. 

I have broke the traditional convention of listing the tracks on the Digipak in a linear order on the digipak. Most Digipaks lay out their track list in either a vertical or horizontal manner, whereas I chose to curve my tracks around the sunglasses in the image.

In my front panel I have also followed the Mumford and Sons album cover design. I kept with the simplistic design, and the only text on the front cover is the band name and the Album name.