digipak

1. Digipak Analysis - Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication
In my groups project we are required to produce a successful Digipak (CD cover and jacket, and
album artwork) advertising our final media product. To gain insight further into what makes up a
Digipak we have chosen to analyse some examples that reflect our chosen genre.
Band: Red Hot Chili Peppers
Genre: Alternative rock
Album: Californication
Released: 8th June 1999
The word 'Californication' is a
slang word meaning wanting the
California lifestyle and believing
the Hollywood ideal of
Californication. In their song, also
called 'Californication' there is a
lyric "Dream of Californication",
which is referring to people,
mainly other artists, changing
there style in order to be come
more popular and successful, to achieve the California lifestyle.
The album artwork shows a pool and sky which have switched positions (water is in the sky and
the sky is in the pool), this is symbolic of the Red Hot Chili Peppers meaning of the word
Californication, as the changes between the sky and water, represents how people are trying to
change themselves in order to have the California lifestyle (Californication).
A way which the band stray themselves away from the idea of Californication is by having the
bands name 'Red Hot Chili Peppers' written in a very small white text in the top left of the cover,
avoiding it from standing out in the artwork. This is because they don't want the artwork or

2. Digipak to be about them and they want people to focus on the message which is found within
the artwork.
The back of the Digipak shows a picture of what a 'normal' sky would look like with out being
edited. This image had been placed on the back of the album because it doesn't have the
Hollywood effect of Californication, (not changing to be more successful/popular) therefor its
not as important, which is why it is placed on the back, where it well be less regularly seen.
At the bottom of the Digipak, we can see the copyright and licensing information in small print,
this is so the audience aren't distracted from the main text which is the track listings and also it
assures that they're not distracted
from the design on the Digipak.
Something which I found bizarre
about the Digipak, was the
location of the Barcode. The
Barcode is located just to the left
of the top right hand side corner.
Typically on albums the Barcode
is found on the bottom left or
right corners, which has also
been regularly been done by the
Red Hot Chili Peppers. The
reason for this is that once again
the band are promoting their
message of Californication as
they are straying away from
what they normally do, in order
to gain more success.
Analysing this Digipak gives us creative ideas and influences us to use similar techniques that
many bands do of this particular genre. We have decided to follow a certain style when creating
our Digipak as well as use images to represent things.