The front cover of Pink Floyd's 1979 album "The Wall" features the band's name and album title written in graffiti-style red letters on a white brick wall background, reflecting the band's rebellious image at the time. Throughout the digipak packaging, a recurring brick wall pattern represents the "wall" between the band and audience that was felt during the album's recording. The inside panels house the CDs and lyric booklet, continuing the minimalist brick wall design and including abstract, hand-drawn monster illustrations relating to the album's imaginative music.

1. Pink Floyd – The Wall
Digipak Analysis

2. Front Cover
The album cover features the band’s name and the name of
the album in red writing which is made to look like graffiti
on the white brick wall background which runs throughout
the Digipak. This aesthetic choice of a graffiti look was
chosen because it reflects on the band’s youthful and
rebellion image at the time of the album release in 1979;
Pink Floyd were very different to a lot of popular music at
the time and in general they became popular with younger
people who fitted outside the mainstream and the cover art
reflects this.
The brick wall which is used on the front, back and inside of
the Digipak, this design was chosen in relation to the album
title of “The Wall” and the fact that throughout the
recording and narrative of the album the band felt an
imaginary wall between themselves and the audience. I
believe that the design of the front cover was kept relatively
simple in order for the band and album names to be easily
distinguishable as they are the truly important pieces of
information on the cover.
There is a recurring background of a brick wall which is
patterned across every section of the Digipak, this is done
to give the impression that the wall itself is physical and
gigantic. In addition to this it is a visual representation of the
vast, progressive album itself which has a very long running
time of 80:54 including 28 songs. Although the album sold
massively well and Pink Floyd were superstars, it became
influential for many indie rock bands in the years that
followed and the minimalistic DIY cover of this album is
certainly reflected as a genre convention by many other
artists.

3. Inside section
The middle section for this Digipak houses 2 CDs and a small booklet which includes information on the lyrics and
production of the album and yet again there is a minimalistic design running throughout. The brick wall background
covers the whole middle section in one pattern, with the design running smoothly over each panel giving the effect of
the wall being a constant, large mass. This is again reflective of the music of Pink Floyd which is very complex and
layered and could be described as a “wall of sound”. Not only is the background layer repetitive but also there is a
similar art style and theme for all three of the panels on the inside of the Digipak, with cartoonish monsters being
drawn in pastel colours. These images are clearly hand drawn and although they are interesting and well executed
they are done so in an imperfect, abstract and slightly psychedelic way. This once again reflects the music of Pink Floyd
which is imaginative, progressive and abstract. Throughout all of the album artwork the band do a thorough job of
ensuring that the music and visuals go hand in hand and clearly belong to the same project. In terms of genre
conventions these inside panels certainly adhere to and were influential in the common theme of psychedelic indie
rock being visually colourful, vibrant and abstract.

4. Back Cover