The digipak design for Arctic Monkeys' debut album Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not conveys the album's themes through minimal but meaningful design elements. The front cover features a grayscale photo of a friend smoking, representing the typical British youth outlook. Throughout the digipak, smoking imagery and grayscale photos depict the mundane daily lives and nightlife of working-class northern England youth. While simple in design, the digipak contains deep meanings that resonate with the album's lyrics and rock genre conventions to create a distinct identity for the band and album.

1. Digipak Analysis
Arctic Monkeys are an indie rock band from Sheffield, England consisting of members: Alex
turner (guitar, vocals), Jamie Cook (guitar), Andy Nicholson (bass guitar) and Matt Helders
(drums). The band began playing local gigs and started becoming popular through Myspace,
which meant they had a large fan base before the release of this album. Released in January
2006, Whatever people say I am, that’s what I’m not (produced by Jim Abiss and Alan Smyth,
Domino Records) is the bands first album. It reached number one the UK, Ireland and Australia
and since it’s release it have gained universal acclaim, with faultless reviews and many
considering it one of the greatest British albums of all time.
The album has been described as ‘concept’ due to its recurring themes of clubbing and British
youth subculture, and ‘observational’ because the first person narratives in the lyrics of the
songs. These themes are reflected in the design of the digipak; it has a simple, austere vogue and
a booklet of photographs depicting the mundane day to day life in a northern English town
which parallels perfectly the ‘straight to the point’ and social realist-esque lyrics.

2. Front Cover
The front cover of this digipak is a grayscale photograph
of a friend of the band, Chris McClure smoking a
cigarette. This image is a manifestation of the album’s
core message; representing at face value the outlook of
the typical British youth. The artist’s name is the only text
on the front of the album. The particular font is only used
in this album and in each album they use a different font.
This means that each album can be recognised as a
completely new brand identity which is probably intended
due to the distinct diversity in album themes and styles.
As digipaks go this front cover is pretty unconventional. It
contains very little written information and a photograph
that has no literal relevance to the product or brand. But
this is among a few albums whose artwork works
successfully by flouting conventions. If we think about
iconic albums like Nevermind by Nirvana or Dark Side of
the Moon by Pink Floyd, we remember them for their
distinct image on the cover. These images have much
more resonating effect on the audience and it is solely
because they are different, bold and unconventional.

3. The reverse of the digipak uses a photograph similar to the
front. Here Chris McClure is rubbing his eye, presumably
because he has smoke in it. These pictures symbolise the
themes of the album and the rock ‘n’ roll genre itself. It’s a
kind of rebellious flout to the commercial side of the music
industry which demands artists to transform their image to
sell records. This album artwork isn't exactly glamorous or
attractive, nor does it attempt to convince anyone to buy it
with extravagant design. It is for these reasons that the
product is addressing the target audience; rock ‘n’ roll fans
will find an honest, relatable photograph appealing,
especially the fans who are used to listening to music
through non-mainstream platforms (Myspace). The
unambiguous way in which the song titles are laid out
resembles the pattern of a carefully structured poem. It
implies that each line (song title) has deep meaning and
connotations. This could be an incredibly obscure
reference to Alex Turner’s lyrical style which is contains
numerous metaphors, similes, connotations and meaningful
themes which mirrors the aspects of a poem.
Back

4. The inside is pretty simple. The song title list is repeated again on the first flap, this time the list is centred. The way in
which each title is lower case and some are rather long suggests that they are more than just song titles. They are lyrics taken
from the songs which give a small clue to they major themes of each song and therefore setting the tone for the album. The
CD itself features a greyscale picture of a full ashtray. This is complying with the typical convention of continuing a theme
(smoking) throughout the digipak’s design. It also complies with the genre’s typical themes of a reckless, somewhat
unhealthy rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle. The grayscale theme symbolises a carefree, mundane life but also emphasises the low lit
clubs and nightlife themes of the album.
Inside

5. The booklet features no lyrics to the song (a standard convention for album booklets).
Instead it features an array of photographs which depict the day and night life and also
the outlook of the presumably working class British youth. The faces of the characters
give quite depressing stares and even at night when they are going out with friends they
don’t look to joyful. This gives a sense that these people are bored and slightly
misunderstood. It could be referring to the way in which life in the north of England has
moved on from being a hub of culture and music up until the 1990s, especially with the
youth, and is now considered desolate and mundane. One particular feature that gives
the booklet this impression is the use of colour as opposed to the greyscale in the rest of
the digipak. This shows how the promise of rock ‘n’ roll wears of when faced with day
to day reality, in particular when faced with the reality of work which is a symbol for
adulthood and growing up. Although the design of this digipak is simple, it has many
deep and meaningful connotations encoded into it and these messages can be easily read
by the target audience (Barthes).
Booklet