digipak analysis for media

1. Rihanna ‘loud’
digipak analysis

2. Front cover
•The front cover of Rihannas album ‘Loud’ uses bold colours
and a simplistic layout. The extreme close up shot of her face
shows the audience who the artist is and allows us to make
inferences about her as an artist from her appearance.
•Her make up is very simplistic apart from her bold, red
lipstick. This fits in with the colour scheme of the album and
matches her hair, tying the front cover together. The colour
red has connotations of romance and sex which sassure
would say is a signifier as this represents the music within the
album.
•We can see that she isn’t wearing any clothes in this picture which Laura Murely would say
is because she has been subject of the male gaze, as she is a woman in front of the camera
she has been sexualised. However, this could be a conscious choice to show that she and
her music are edgy and moder, fitting alongside her unconventional hair colour and tattoo
on her neck.
•The only writing on the album is the album name ‘loud’ this is written in thin sans serif
white font and is spaced out to fill the space across the bottom of the album. This allows it
to stand out and be effective.

3. Back cover
• The back cover of ‘Loud’ fits the same theme as
the front cover. It does however have more text
on it, including a list of all the songs featured in
the album. It also includes information such as
her record label ‘DEF JAM’ and her name
‘Rihanna’ which isn’t featured on the front
cover.
•The picture of her in the background allows us to see more of her that on the front
cover and this again shows her in minimal clothing but is used to attract the
audience as men will like to look at her and women will want to be like her.
•The features on this back cover are very conventional as things like a track list,
record lable, websites linked to the artist and a barcode are all used on normal
albums and this makes it easy to understand and also look professional.

4. The CD
• The CD for this album is made to look like a
rose which could symbolise womenhood
and love. This fits with the theme of her
album as songs such as ‘only girl in the
world’ is empowering to women and songs
like ‘S&M’ are more about sex and love.
• The CD also has her name, the album name
and names of people involved with the
making of the CD on and this is useful as if
it were to be lost from its casing you could
still tell who's album it was.
• The colour pink also fits with the colour
scheme of the album as muted pink and
red colours.

5. The inside pages
• The inside pages of her digipak are similar
to the front and back cover as well as the
CD. She is shown to be lying on a bed of
roses as well as holding roses. The red from
the flowers fits in with the colour of her
hair and her lips. Roses and the colour red
often symbolise romance and tragedy
which is a theme of the music in this album.
• She is wearing a neutral outfit which allows
the other colours in the picture to stand out
and also show that she is not pretending to
be anything else but herself and this makes
her seem like a more relatable artist who
audiences can empathise with.