#110 Ancillary Task 1: Digipak Research

Our first ancillary task will be to produce the album art which will be the cover and other panels of the CD Single release. Album art is essential to include in any form of music product, whether it's a snapshot of the music video with a label identifying what and who the music video is by (this form is normally through digital releases such as iTunes) or even when downloading from the Internet, the album art is a visualisation form of identifying what the song/album is called and which artist/band performed it. A digipack is normally the front, back cover and also the inlay pictures/cards you get with some albums.

Typical codes and coventions an album cover would normally include are:

The front:

• The title of the album 
• The artist/band who the album is performed by.
• A visualisation of the album theme/content. This can also be a picture of the artist, allowing good establishment of what the artist looks like. 
• Parental Advisory label if neccessary (Awarded by the RIAA - Recording Industry Association of America)

The back:

• The tracklisting on the CD. This can include guest features and production credits on each, individual track. For example, on Jay-Z's Blueprint 3 album: Off That (Featuring Drake) (Produced by Timbaland).
• Picture on the back cover is optional. However, it can just be the other side of the front picture, or an alternative picture that resembles the front picture.
• The small print, similar to the end credits of a film, which includes the legal terms of the album, where it was recorded and under what label. (Logo's of the signed label are also included using small pictures)

The following examples of CD Covers/Album Arts below are from Kanye West's albums.

By analyzing the 2 covers, I will be able to identify the typical codes and conventions that a front cover/album art requires. From the 2 covers, you can see the artist uses a unique character which is the bear, known as the "dropout mascot" which runs through Kanye's 3 albums, which is also his logo of such. The 3 titles of the albums have a educational subject towards them. The first album being called "The College Dropout", you can see (on the right) a teddy mascot looking rather upset, alone and possibily left out or not appreciated by other people which reflects on the title and sets the album tone of what sort of material the album will include. You also have the Parental Advisory Explicit Content label on all the 3 covers which also informs the person buying the album that the contents of this album is for mature adults only and need a younger listen to it, parental advisory is

 recommended. 

As you can see, there is more than one version of the album cover, the reason behind this is not quite clear but I would imagine it being due to a particular country release (white coloured background being the UK release and the coloured one being the US version) 

 You can also see from the covers that they follow a certain colour pallete. With the first one, with the obvious white background, there is a golden, brown color too, which makes it easy to identify each album, easy to look at it and the sharp, bold colours attract the persons eye. On the front cover, there isn't any font at all (College Dropout) which expresses the album as a form of art, where the back cover details what this "form of art" is about and who it is by. However, Kanye West is known for including a sticker which has the artists name and album title which the person buying can apply on the front cover if they wanted to. With The College Dropout back cover, you can see he's put his name and the album on the left hand side which proves my point and again, he has used the background colour/image of the bench he is sitting on which still follows the narrative/theme of the album, but also gives it the creative input where he could've just put a boring coloured colour instead. Typically, the small print on any album cover will include what label the the album is distributed on and what you could associate with the starting film credits as the back of a album cover: the main details, the main producers, artists featured and recording locations.

















With the back cover above, being that there isn't any information on what songs are on the CD, I can imagine the die-hard fans would be intrigued in buying this version, because they know what they're going to get but whereas a normal person buying out of interest may want to buy the other version so they know what track they are listening to etc. Note, in the US version, the UK back cover is used as an inlay creating the little illusion that the round shape of text is in the form of the disc where it would be placed in the case.

 Next, I will be analyzing the second album from Kanye West called Late Registration. As mentioned earlier, he keeps the same theme running which is refelected on the subject topics his songs are about and keeping in touch with his iconic teddy mascot. This use of of the silhouette lighting which empathsizes the shadow of the teddy bear shows he is alone, especially with him opening the big doors of what appears to be a library or the inside of University/College. We can identify the building as a formal place such as a library because of the brown, antique like colours and the big door handles which  you don't often find in a western, 21st century College. The artist has used very little font, apart from his name and album title which both appear to have a very "Times New Roman" font, which is always the formality of typing a letter, which links with the theme of education.

The back cover is a play-on visualiation, because we see the teddy leaving the room and his back is turned towards us as so we are looking at the back cover. Again, the artist has our attention with the picture and not the text as the text is very small, almost identical to his previous album cover art and again, there is the hint of brown shades that stck with the album theme.







Judging by these covers, I think if our covers include the artist that represents himself which the audience can look at it and immediately know it's an Example song/album, then that would be fine. I also think we should include the Parental Advisory label for the legal perspective and this idea of keeping the front cover minimalistic in terms of text is ideal because it doesn't take up too much space and the back cover will provide all the details (the person interested) will want to know. I also think it would be ideal to maybe alter one or two minor features which can allow us to have multiple versions of covers so even if we choose one, we can always go back and give each cover a specific version and purpose in doing so.