What is a digipak?

What is a digipak?

A digipak typically consists of a folded heavy paper/cardboard or card stock with one or more plastic trays which can hold the CD or DVD attached to the inside. It is one of the first alternatives to jewel cases that is used by major record companies.

It is often used as the packaging for CD singles or special editions. The use of digipaks became popular amongst record labels and recording artists in the early 2000s.

§  Digipaks looks nice and is perhaps more stylish and professional-looking than jewel cases.

§  However they are more expensive than jewel cases.

§  Digipaks are more environmentally friendly because they use about 65% less plastic than most jewel cases.

§  Although digipaks don’t crack like jewel cases but they wear away quicker as the paper eventually comes apart or the colour may fade.

§  Furthermore the teeth used to hold the CD in place cracks and fall out more easily than is jewel cases as the outer packaging is made of paper.

Similar Product Research

I analysed a music video which is similar to what I intend to create. I chose this music video because it a performance-based pop music video which involves the lyrics of the song in a creative way. I identified some interesting parts of the music video in terms of the lyrics, mise-en-scene as well as the use of camera.

Media Similar Product Research from fionamedia

For this task I analysed digipaks, magazine advertisements and websites. For each of them I analysed parts such as the colour scheme, image and text. Through this task I have learnt that having a consitent colour scheme is important in making a product look professional. The image should also be thought carefully to match the colour scheme and the text should also be considered well to make it suitable for the product. I will consider to use some of the conventions I found in my own product such as having the artist and album name in a different colour.

Production Diary 1 - intial thoughts

For this G324 coursework we are required to do 1 of the 14 briefs given including a music video, short film, TV trailer, magazine etc.

I decided to do a music video because I like the idea of the package for that brief. In this package you can choose to do 2 of the following 3 options: a website homepage for the band, a digipak for the album’s release and a magazine advertisement for the digipak. All 3 of the options are quite good and would be interesting to do. At this stage I am thinking of doing the homepage and advertisement. I believe that doing a homepage would be challenging but would be enjoyable as the same time so I may decide to do that. On the other hand I am more experienced in making poster type products so the advertisement may be a choice for me too. I am still in the early stages of gathering ideas so at the moment it is alright to hang on to these thoughts and come to a conclusion later.

As for the music video, I am not too sure about what kind of concept I want to go for yet. In class, we looked through several existing music videos as well as ones produced by students from the past years to get some ideas of the type of music videos we could create. Furthermore we looked at the different styles of music videos we could base our own one on. For example, some of the styles included narrative plot, time lapse, spilt screen, utilising key lyrics and multiple personalities and so on.
We looked at some of the most successful music videos created by students in the past so that we have an idea of the standard we must produces ours to. It was interesting to see how different some of the videos were, despite getting similar credit.

After watching and discussing about the types of music videos we could do, it has helped me a bit to gather some ideas in my head about what I could create. Some concepts I may consider include: utilising key lyrics and extreme slow motion. I believe that these concepts would be interesting to do as it is less usual for a music video because most music videos are of the artist lip-syncing and performing or there is a story to the music video. I find that these types of music videos are more challenging since you would have to find people who can act well for it to be successful. Furthermore creating a storyline is not easy and personally writing a story is not my strength so I perhaps won’t go for that type of music video.