Digipak Research

A digipak is a style of CD packaging. Digipaks usually consist of a gatefold (bookstyle) collection of pictures, letters, booklet liner notes etc. Booklet liner notes are notes written to give credit, or rather, specify who has taken part in the production of the album.

Below are two of Rihanna's digipaks, from these two digipaks we're able to analyse that as an artist she is fond of filling up her digipak with pictures of herself.

 The digipak for her 'LOUD' album was one picture, spread over three pages.

Digipaks are able to give more information about the artist themselves, the production of the album or even just make them that more realistic and ordinary by containing never-seen-before pictures of themselves.

 

In TLC's digipak, they created a 12 page digipak where they all wrote Thank You letters to those closest to them. This gave fans an insight into the lives of this famous girl group and increased their likability. They gave specifications about each song on the album. All together, on the opposite side, it opened up into a poster.

 

In Nelly's digipak, he also gave specifications about each song and included were a few pictures of himself.

For my digipak, I've taken Dyer's star theory into consideration - stars have to be both ordinary and extraordinary / absent and present. That's why, like TLC's personal thank you's included in their digipak, my artist will address a personal letter to her fans, so she remains approachable and present to her fans, it will also include exclusive and informal pictures of herself and those close to her to show that she is ordinary and has friends and takes pictures just like other people do. By including this in my digipak, it portrays my artists persona as well as appeals more to her target audience of teens and young adults who like to feel like they truly know their favourite musician, that although the artist is a superstar, deep down, they're not so different and are acknowledged as a fan.