Exsisting Digipacks
The Story So Far are a very stereotypical pop punk band who produce pop punk digipacks. The main stereotypical themes in which you would expect to find is the front cover almost guaranteeing to be album art work. Album artwork is very important in the pop punk genre as not only does it define the genre, crystal clear but it also adds to the whole genre feel. Pop punk is very DIY, and by having album art work, drawn by the band or a friend, makes it even more DIY and conventional as it related the closeness they put into their music. Here are two basic front covers of albums in which they have produced and drawn themself, as both are imminently eye catching and bold. You will find this pattern in a lot of existing digipacks to be simple, yet using in your face colours which grabs your eyes attention. “What you don’t see” is a cleverly designed album, as it takes the album name and uses a quirky cartoon like picture of vibes coming out of a person’s face. You will find that they tend to follow themes throughout albums also relating them to their title name. This is a perfect example of typical pop punk, as these are only the front covers, but the basic colours and fonts are followed throughout. You will also notice that each band has a different trade mark typography which you will see repeated on all their albums to set an obvious mark.
Still a pop punk band, Real Friends take the whole digipack idea differently. For them, they have stuck to a series of themes throughout their albums which almost connect in each one. They like to focus on realistic and outdoor shots of a neighbourhood. Still connecting with their genre, they have portrayed the old style punk here, with a simple image taking up the whole space with their signature name and then name of the album followed by underneath. In the first picture, we can see it’s called “Put yourself back together”, again following the conventions they have laid out this picture, with a mess of teenage things cluttered on the floor. It contrast with what the albums called, as it’s saying to clean up this mess, which is not shown in the picture. A lot of irony is presented within the front cover of albums which attracts the audiences, making them want to listen to what’s inside. These simple pictures are easy to take yet they have so much meaning, as they’re not just random, but actually do relate to the overall theme.
Green Day are the old school pop punk legends, and like Blink-182 they have created a themed digipack following their greatest hits. The colour theme of green is very present in this digipack, as it follows through the front and back completely. When we look inside the digipack, we also see that the CD’s them self are green, following this necular theme which is presented on the back. The front of the digipack is simple, and just shows the basic outline of a city, where as the back you have a block print of a man with a gasmask on, (tying in with their grenade logo) this seems very greenday of them. The inside of the digipack is defiantly interesting as a lot of bold prints, are being shown to us, grabbing our eyes imminently. There is a picture of the band behind the CD’s on both sides, showing their identity and also relating to the audience.
Blink-182 are the perfect example of a stereotypical pop punk digipack layout, as in the pictures above, it shows how they have really adapted their themes and followed them throughout, in their digipacks. The first picture is one of their albums from their greatest hits, which has a simple traffic light theme on the front cover., the CD then follows this as in each traffic light is presented as a disk with the logo. Each one is a special edition CD, in which gives the audiences an opportunity to collect all three if they are a mega fan. The second picture takes on a more live theme, as this album is from their show in America. Again you can see that they have constructed album art work, which follows them playing live at a show, the back cover also follows this theme in showing their crowd along with the song titles. The CD is simple, yet funky as it takes on a retro print of their faces around in a circle, linking in with the inside of the CD case, which contains many live pictures of the bands performing, at various different concerts.