The document discusses the design of a digipack album cover for a fictional indie band called Limerence. It analyzes how the design utilizes conventions from professional indie albums to appear professional. Key conventions included using muted colors associated with the indie folk genre, placing the band name prominently, featuring natural imagery, and selecting a simple yet stylish font. The document also compares the design to specific album covers and considers some minor improvements that could make the text more readable.

1. The Digipack Product
Jon Black

2. Professional Comparison A
 As shown to the right, the digipack front panel we
created shares similar conventions to existing
professional indie band ‘Mumford and Sons’ in
visual style. The colours used are muted, though
only subtly so, to create a distinctive look which
juxtaposes with say pop which often uses bright
attractive hues to catch the audience’s eye. In this
respect, the style of the digipack could be seen as
using conventions that the professional example
uses – but also that the convention of abstract
visuals being used in digipack front covers to
invoke mystery or create a surrealist atmosphere
has also been utilised which fits with not only this
example but several other indie artists.
 However we decided against placing the font as
shown in the professional product as the
audience’s eye is usually drawn to the top or
middle third of a subject and to the left – meaning
that the placement of “Limerence” at the top will
grab the user’s attention more efficiently while
maintaining a subtlety in having the font white and
not detached from the front cover image. To draw
too much attention to the album name would take
away from the muted aesthetic of the piece, hence
the decision to design it this way.

3. Professional Comparison B
 In this comparison, the convention of
having the band name at the top of the
panel has been used in both products,
both of which using clear typefaces in
white. Though not exclusively Indie, this
convention has been utilised to infer
professionalism in our product, and
comparing them visually it could be said
that we were successful in using the text
tools to achieve this near industry level
style. In addition, the convention of having
the artists feature on the front of the CD
also connects these two products, with the
Sportfreunde Stiller digipack showing all
three band members which somewhat
juxtaposes with the Limerence cover
which only shows one band member (with
her face obscured by the balloon prop).
With this in mind, it could be seen as
using the convention, but developing it by
including the abstract element prominent
in the music video product (with the
digipack cover image also being used in
there).

4. The Colour Scheme
 When researching the Indie
folk genre, the colour brown
and colours on this palette are
often associated with this
genre. To fully consolidate our
image as that of an Indie
folk/alternative band, we
therefore decided to use this
convention in the digipack –
primarily on the back panel
and the CD panel in which it’s
the background colour. This is
also subtley shown in the side
panels of the digipack, as the
band name, album title, and
background colour are all
shades of brown – ingraining
the Indie folk aesthetic in the
colour scheme of the product.

5. The Font
 Indie products often use simplistic yet
eloquent fonts and have the text in one block
colour to make it readable. In creating the
digipack we found the ‘King’ font which we
then utilised for this purpose. As shown in the
panels, the text is simple, yet with a charming
aesthetic that one would associate with indie
bands (alongside the convention of hand
written logos, which we didn’t utilise but is
another convention that’s used across many
Indie sub genres). The quote “Forget what
hurt you but not what it taught you” is in white
to juxtapose with the forest scenery image in
the background, and the text colour being
chosen with this in mind is something we
considered throughout the creation of the
digipack product. The text needed to be
readable, and to achieve this we either
changed the text colour, or altered the colour
of the image behind the text to make sure the
user can see it clearly. The font itself is Serif,
giving it a distinctive and stylised look, and
we used varying font sizes to suit each panel
– the lyrics panel text, the quote panel, and
the back panel all have different sizes
according to how important the content is
and of course how much how much of it
there is to fit onto the panel.

6. Use of Image
 Many Indie genres use thematic imagery associated
with the band or particular album/digipack to create
a strong emotional resonance with the audience, or
to invoke curiosity in the new users that hadn’t come
across their work. The more peculiar designs often
sell well because they turn heads – and we kept this
in mind while creating the digipack product. In
regards to thematic imagery, we maintained from
the beginning that natural imagery and motifs would
be utilised in all three products. We did this for a
number of reasons, but one was that nature holds a
beauty that resonates with humanity – and so to link
our brand identity with nature would establish a sort
of trust in Limerence’s name. The style of our
products makes nature beautiful, yet the colour
grading of the images give it a sorrowful vibe and
further consolidates the indie convention by using
muted colour.
 As mentioned in analysing the website and video
products, the balloon imagery is also present in the
digipack front cover and the polysemic nature of this
visual metaphor naturally still applies. The audience
can see a plethora of interpretations within the
balloon imagery, from identity to solitude, and the
choice to make the balloon black also holds some
additional connotations of despair, darkness, and
death. We made this motif a distinguishing image
for our band, using it prominently across all three
products for the reason that it’s a simple prop that
many can relate to, and because of this it’s
memorable – which is always important in
establishing a professional identity.

7. What could be improved?
 The image in the top right has been blurred for artistic purposes, but the original
image is also blurry and taken on one of the shoot days on a whim. If we did the
digipack again, I would frame it so the balloon would also feature with the
narrative protagonist and make sure it’s in focus so full control of the image
would be available in post production.
 In addition, though fairly clear, the text colour on the back panel (centre bottom)
is white, which merges into the butterfly imagery in the background. This makes
some words a little tricky to read, though not significantly. All the same, using an
outline on the song names in a darker colour (even subtly, just so the text is
distinctive against the background) would make it a lot more readable for the
user.
 The text on the bottom of the back panel overlaps with the leaves pattern
slightly, and the centred style of the copyright information doesn’t conform to
regular digipack convention (which is different, but seems slightly unprofessional
in retrospect). Perhaps setting it to a left to right paragraph style and moving it
slightly to the right, though a relatively small change, would make the
professionalism of the product more prominent. Of course, by no means is the
digipack of an industry standard as we didn’t have the resources or skills
available to create something worthy of commerical distribution, but for what we
had (content shot on the shoot days for the music video, and a limited time to
complete the product in, in my opinion we did well.