Tuesday 23 November 2010

Print Production - Digipak Analysis - Alternative

To get a better idea of how digipaks are successful in their presentation of their bands, I have began to look into different digipaks, analysing them and understanding how they are relevant to their corresponding artist and genre. Muse's album digipak for "The Resistance" stood out in particular.

Muse - The Resistance

Outer Covers


Inside Covers

Disc



Analysis

It's interesting that Muse have taken an illustrative approach to their digipak front cover; most album covers use promotional-like photography of the band or subjects relevant to the band in order for a viewer to identify with them. Indeed, given their alternate music genre, it's obvious that they have chosen a similarly alternate route in digipak's presentation. Even the photos of the band defy the mainstream norms. Whilst most pop artists define their albums by using their own image, clear and looking straight at the camera (and thus targeting the audience) in a studio-type location, Muse's photos are black and white, blurred action shots, suggestive of a constantly active lifestyle, and not clearly staged and falsified as some mainstream cover photos may appear; with run-down urban settings, these are far from the glamour of a pop album, making the album's name, "Resistance," perhaps more symbolic in its ability to resist the mainstream expectations of an album's appearance and the music it contains. Indeed, the first track, "Uprising" states, "they will not control us." The bleak colours also shadow the dark, dystopian mood of many of the tracks' lyrics.

It can also be observed that there's a lot of symbolism in the cover's image. The multi-coloured geometric structure surrounds the centrally aligned Earth, with the side of the path producing reading lines which lead the eye from the bottom to the centre of the picture, back to the planet. It's impersonal; all we see of any person is a silhouetted form, leaving us with no idea if this person is old or young, male or female, a contrast to more mainstream albums, whereby the target audience is generally embodied by the cover photos/images. It can be understood that Muse's audience is not as particularly age or gender specific. Instead, by focussing on the Earth on the cover, a sense of universal importance is instead portrayed. The stars in the background of the picture link to many major Muse themes, and could be intertexually referring to Muse's older albums such as "Black Holes and Revelations", which had strong space themes. Theme consistancy is even displayed in the use of text colour on the album - just as the cover's colours graduate through a reverse-spectrum of colour, from purples through to oranges and reds, as does the track list and the title on the spine, allowing it to stand out against the otherwise bleak colours. It also shows how the cover image continues on to the disc, now in an utterly spherical and colourless form.

It's clear that Muse is a well established band; they have no need to clearly brand their material and so, wheras a new band may have a large band logo or title to clearly promote the artist, this cover shows both a small band logo and title, leaving the image as the prominent feature. This suggests that the band has a large enough following for fans to seek the music out, rather than rely on simply spotting it on a shelf.

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