Blog 9 Digipak

Digipak has been a new form of physical media distribution in terms of product packaging since the 2000s. The form evolved from LP records in 1948, introduced by Columbia record, and Jewel Cases in the early 1980s.

👈This is the first LP disk manufactured for sale, Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E Minor 1948 recording. It is somewhat designed with little semiotics of a polar(?) that might be associated with the polar in a hall where people play classical music (?)

The LP was great, but it was not suitable to carry around due to its gigantic size. Plus, you can't carry a phonograph with you, can you?

So CD replaced the LP with a new kind of package called Jewel Case, which protects the disk better from external damaging. The flipping design, of course, provides better opportunities to incorporate designs for commercial propaganda designs.

The disk you are seeing here is the album design that our dear media teacher, Mista Wunker, favours, The Mothership. Like the songs, the red, contrasting colour, minimalistic linear album design unifies the agitated mood that Led Zepplin incorporates in their music.

Now, Digipaks. They are a kind of CD packing but are an alternative to jewel cases. Jewel cases are made out of plastic, and digipaks are made out of paper that has been UV-coated.

It seems like many indie rock bands like to use digipacks when it comes to distribution. This is the album No Line on the Horizon by U2. The design of the digipak draws on black-and-white and minimalism. The front cover is a picture divided into half by two areas consisting of different grey degrees, symbolizing the "Horizon." The back cover is a picture of the band being cool. The package uses a monochromatic color design to create the theme of loneliness.

Many hip-hop albums use digipacks as well. I'm not a huge hip-hop fan, so I'll pick a random digipak that looks cool to me.

Sky's the Limit by the notorious b.i.g. features 112, a jazz hip-hop rap single. I picked that randomly from Google and listened to it. It was fine. The front cover was probably shot with film tapes, giving a vintage cold-temperature look. He's also wearing full black, contrasting with the brown boots, creating a solemn figure. The use of butterfly or Rembrandt lighting what ever that is, and shadowing of the eyes also adds mysteriousness to the character, which contributes to the over all conventional "Cool" Feature that you'll get from a hip-hop album.