Ancillary Task - Introduction to Digipaks

Digipaks are a form of CD packaging. Being made from card opposed to plastic digipaks can widely advertise an artist and have more space to design album covers on. They age been established widely through out the digital revolution in order to boost record sales by identifying a unique selling point to the customer on the album cover. Digipacks were a licensed product owned by an American packaging company ‘MeadWestvaco’ in 2000. They sold there designs and trademark to manufactures worldwide.

There are many different ways a digipak can be layed out. Some digipaks may only hold 1 CD whilst others, usually` greatest hits albums, hold up to 3 CD’s` within one case. This is created by a series of folds and a long strip of card.

Here we have examples of The Beatles remastered album ‘Sgt Peppers lonely heart club band’ which has 3 panels for one CD. Lots of design work is able to be established through the space provided by the digipak.

Front panel

In the middle is the back cover, left inside picture and the front cover on the right

This is the inside design

Putting a CD in

This is another form of digipak. much smaller and more t the point. It if the album ‘Free Man’ by Burning Spear. It only has 2 panels and as you can see not much design work inside. Unlike most other digipaks it has a stapled in booklet which contains lyrics and photo’s f the band.

Front and Back Cover

Back cover

Inside booklet and CD jewel Case

Inside booklet and CD jewel case

Here I am showing you an Elvis Presley album, ‘The Essential Elvis Presley’. This is a 4 panel digipak which allows huge amounts of design to be established. This is usually used when packages have more than 1 CD. As it is shown their is room for up to 4 CD's. This digipak in particular has 3 CD’s and a booklet which all slide out of sleeves to allow maximum room for photos.

On the left is the Front cover, on the right is pat of the inside panel

Inside panels containing the CD's in Sleeves

CD Sleeves

Back Panels, the 2 middle panels are the front and back cover

Digipak’s are most commonly covered in UV Gloss which gives a shiny effect to it. Doing this creates a sense of professionalism and makes the customer feel as if it is a quality product worth buying. Different printing methods can be used on digipaks as they are made from card, which is ver flexible in terms of manufacture. Digipaks can also feature embossed fonts which look and feel as if they are 3D. they may also have shiny materials printed on them to establish an artists genre or music style.

Digipaks are also eco friendly and can be made from recycled card, or can be recycled. Unlike regular plastic CD packaging they will not produce harmful gasses once their lifespan is over and they are being thrown away.

We going to use a digipak when distributing the CD to our band as we will be able to create Unique selling points from photos of h e band and relevant pictures that fans would be interested in. As we are Using a digipak we can also use more than one CD which allows us to have more songs. From personal experience i have always wanted to purchase a CD with more songs on t rather than an album with only a few songs.

-Bradley Hart