Conventions of an Album Digipak

A digipak is a style of CD or DVD packaging that became popular in the early 2000s, commonly used with music artist's albums. The design of the digipak is generally made of paper which is reinforced by a plastic casing, often with folding spine which they open up like a book. They are designed to fold into a square shape like any CD casing, though they can fold a number of ways, rather than the more conventional and simpler CD cases. A good digipak is always one that is iconic, meaning that it will be recognised, even years after its initial release. 

The front of the digipak will contain artwork which will promote the artist, usually with a central image of the artist(s) or some other design or model which fans will be able to associate with artist, as this is what customers see when they are on the shelves in a store. The front of a digipak should be as eye-catching as possible, and reflect the genre of music and ideology that fans of that artist will be interested in.  The name of the album and artist will also be conventionally placed on the front cover of an album digipak, the exception being with some more alternative music, which may not include the album or artist name on the front. One example of this is the album cover for 'Dreamland' by Wild Belle, though this cover still works as it features Natalie Bergman, the lead singer on the cover, so fans of the artist will still recognise the album. 

The back of a digipak will most likely contain a tracklist, so that customers can see what they are buying in terms of the music on the CD. There will be more artwork on the back of a digipak, again reflecting the genre and ideology of the music on the album. The back of the digipak may also include the artist/album names, as well as conventional things like the barcode and record label. 

Inside the digipak you will firstly see the actual CD, which fits inside a plastic CD disc holder, like any form of disc based media. Though, a lot of these plastic holders in digipaks are different from other disc based media forms, as it is often transparent plastic, as they have more artwork behind the disc. The disc itself will also be incorporated with some form of artwork which will fit in with the style of the digipak. There may also be some extra information about the artist or album inside the digipak, though some artists will go with style over substance, depending on the genre which they represent.