What is a digipak?

What is a Digipak?

 A digipak is part of the packaging involved for CD albums. They typically consist of a book style, which folds and is usually either made out of laminated paper which is then encased within a hard plastic outer case. Digipaks were first created by MeadWestvaco, a global packaging company, and the Digi-Pak is now their trademark item, however since the popularity of them has risen, there are many more manufacturers. Digi-paks are now very common and can be seen surrounding practically every new CD disk coming out. A popular place to see them is music stores such as HMV.

The Digi-Pak is there to sell the CD without the audience necessarily listening to it. The Digi-Pak consists of the album art cover, and looks very similar to the pictures below. The front cover will typically involve a picture of the artist and the title of the album, as well as maybe having a couple of reviews or plugs such as “includes the new smash hit…” The album cover art will depend on what genre the CD is and the personality of the artist e.g. a pop artist like Lady Gaga will typically have bright, neon colours and a fancy/busy cover whereas someone like indie artists Lana Del Ray and Imagine Dragons will have more of a simplistic cover with a ‘less is more’ colour scheme.
The inside of the front will typically consist of all the official information and the copyright and trademark information. The background will most likely be a blurred image or a plain background. Sometimes however, the manufacturers may include a copy of the lyrics in this section.
Next to this one is the section that actually contains the CD. This will also typically consist of a full bleed image of the artist looking straight at the lens, to really capture your attention. In some cases however, the artists prefer to have one image stretched over both inside sections, which can also look impressive. The back cover usually displays the song track titles with an image in the background and may also have more trademark logos.