Digipak introduction with examples

In my coursework, as well as the production of a music video - I have been asked to produce an album cover for a digipak.

Digipaks are usually used in a way which makes known the genre or tone of the music. This helps to target the audience that it wants to target.

Example 1: Katy Perry teenage dream

credit to http://isolovethat.wordpress.com/2010/11/27/teenage-dream-katy-perry-deluxe-edition/

In this digipak album cover, Katy Perry is shown naked barring a candy cotton-esque cloud which wraps around her bottom. Katy Perry is heavily tanned, curvy and has been made to appear attractive. At the moment when her album was released - it was apparant that Katy Perry wasn't an artist who particularly targeted the male populous. Instead, her music opts towards a teenage girl audience of pop fans. This is connoted by her use of first person in her songs - which, given that she is a female artist, makes her songs more identifiable with other young girls (teenagers are specified as an audience thanks to the album title 'Teenage Dream').  The pink and fluffy clouds are also in ways consistent with a typical upbringing of a girl - influences of 'girly pink fluffy' toys and the like. 

The 'uses and gratifications' audience theory could be applied here. Katy Perry is shown lying confidently naked across clouds, so audiences might see that this album would provide them with self esteem as they look to replicate her confidence. 

Example 2: 

This is James Blake's album cover for his debut album. Automatically, you can tell it is geared to reflect a very different genre and tone of music and as a result is targeting a totally different audience to Katy Perry's. James Blake isn't as well known an artist as Katy Perry and so the album cover needs to represent what type of music he creates to target audiences. 

The contrasts of the blurry dark blue and light blue colours provide a far more eerie and mysterious image. The man in the image (James Blake) has been morphed into something that doesn't look all that human any more by the use of overlaying different images of his head turned at angles on top of one another. It gives an alien impression and lets you know that there is something edgy about the album. It's therefore more likely to be targeted at a non-mainstream audience who are perhaps into darker and edgier music. The more mysterious album cover would also perhaps buy into reception theory and this could connote that it wants its audiences to find their own meanings from the music rather than be told it directly.