This document analyzes and compares the layout, design, and artistic choices made in two different album digipaks: Biffy Clyro's "Puzzle" and Kate Nash's "Made of Bricks." For Biffy Clyro, an established band, the front cover omits band information and features ambiguous puzzle piece imagery. Inside pages pair lyrics with meaningful photos instead of band images. Dark colors and a simple bold font are used. In contrast, Kate Nash's digipak emphasizes femininity through handwritten font, images of Nash in stereotypical feminine settings, and bright colorful designs and photos. Gender expectations seem to have influenced the different artistic choices in layout and design between the two albums.
2. BiffyClyro -Puzzle This is the front and back cover to the BiffyClyro, Puzzle digipak. Immediately we can notice the Layout- unusually the front cover has no text on it and instead the album name and artist name are on the back cover. This is unusual as artists usually include this information on the front cover in order to attract audiences to the product and allow them to recognise immediately who it is. It is possible that as BiffyClyro are already a well known band who do not need to establish themselves or their image they were able to put this information out of sight and focus instead more so on the album cover artwork. The band members are not included in any of the images on the front and back covers of the digipak, this is again unusual but possible for a well known band such as BiffyClyro. The images are ambiguous and there is a repeated motif of the puzzle piece. It is possible that the artists wanted their audiences to be thoughtful about what message they are trying to portray and to take their work seriously.
3. Here are the inside pages of the Digipak. We can see again that The band are not the focal point For any of the images and have Instead chosen to display artistic, Meaningful, ambiguous photos Instead. The structure of the Inside pages is simple. On the Left hand panel there are lyrics to a song from the album typed up in full for audience members and on the right hand panel is a photograph. Although there is no direct link between what is written in the lyrics and the photograph accompanying it, both are passionate and meaningful and will cause audiences to think about the messages being delivered to them and the band’s purpose. The font used is bold white lettering. By using such a simplistic font the band do not take away from the album art work or the message being portrayed in the lyrics. They have used a bold font so that all lyrics can be read easily and are not disrupted by complicated and intricate fonts. The colours used here are dark and dull, there are only a few bright colours highlighted such as the flames from the man on fire. These dark colours coincide with the serious and professional theme/feel of the digipak.
4. Kate Nash- Made of Bricks There are noticeable differences Between this digipak and the last Analysed which arguably are a Result of the artist’s gender. Firstly Take for example the font, here the Font is feminine, handwritten and Delicate when compared with the Simplistic bold font seen previously. This perhaps has strong connotations Of gender expectations –women are More likely to focus on personal touches (such as hand writing their text and are expected to be very pretty , delicate and feminine instead of bold and strong. Linking to this is the image on the front Cover- we can see the artist in a red dress, the colour drawing attention to her and the colour perhaps Connotating her as passionate, lustful and feminine. We can also see behind her a homely house and neat garden. This again suggests the idea of typical femininity –focused on a neat, pretty home. The colours both on the front and back page are bright yellows, reds, blues and greens and white. This again contrasts to the darker, more imposing colours seen in the male artist digipak seen prior to this.
5. Moving on to the inside pages of the digipak we can see that the feminine motif’s focused on, on the front page are continued through the inside- the colours are again bright, light and colourful. Many shades of pink, red, yellow, blue and purple can be seen here making the page visually stimulating for audiences. Again the artist is included in the image in a scenario that is very typically A feminine stereotype –she is in a bathroom where clothes have been hung up to dry and she is doing her makeup in the mirror. These factors all emphasize her femininity to audiences making her appealing to both men- who are attracted to her and women who want to be like her. The structure of the inside pages of the digipak are the same as the digipak of BiffyClyro. On the right hand panel there is an image (here of the artist instead of an aristic photograph) and on the left hand side panel is a typed copy of the lryics to one (or two here) of the song(s) on the album.
