Digipak Analysis (Arcade Fire - The Suburbs)

To gain a more developed understanding of the features and context of a digipak me and my group have decided to analyse another one, this time of the band Arcade Fire and the album The Suburbs. We have chosen this band as they also fit under the genre of alternative rock, and have a similar style as Sigur Ros. 

Artist: Arcade Fire
Album: The Suburbs
Genre: Alternative Rock
Released: January 2010

The above image shows the album cover for 'The Suburbs'. The album front consists of an image showing a parked car in a location showing palm trees and a caribbean style environment. The warm tones in the image of reds and oranges suggest summer, which is also represented by the palm tree in the left side of the image. The image also looks fairly grainy like an old fashioned film photograph. The way the car is composed in the image makes the viewer feel like they are inside of the car looking out at the scene in front. This links in with the album title "The Suburbs" as it suggests being submerged into the suburbs themselves. 

Again, like other similar musicians and artists of this genre the band themselves are not pictured on the album cover. This meets the audiences expectations and fits in with the style of the "arty" genre. This album cover is interesting as the title of the album is not on the front cover. This is unusual for bands as normally the audience distinguish the album by scanning for its name. The bands name Arcade Fire is not eye-catching at first as it it scrawled at the top right hand side of the cover. It is however, in white font that stands out against the blue and red colours in the background image. 

The image to the right shows the full CD jacket and inside cover of the digipak. A landscape image covers both sides of the jacket giving it a panoramic feel. The colours are slightly desaturated fitting in with the stylistic elements of the genre. A digipak like this one inspires our group to perhaps try have a landscape image of nature and earth style photography combined with portraiture in our digipak. 


The image to the right shows the back cover of the digipak. An usual design technique is used here that features the title of the album on the back cover of the CD case. Nevertheless, the title of the album stands out as well as the band name as a lighter shade of red has been used on a dark, textured background. The barcode is situated in the bottom right corner so that it does not distract the audiences attention from the main focus of this side of the digipak.

The image to the left shows a variation of the album cover and complete digipak. Again a car is used in the image to give a submerged feel to the viewer, however the locations in the images are all different. This technique has been used by the record company to increase the chances of the target audience buying more so that they can have all the different variations. Techniques like these are used a lot in the music industry, another would be released remastered editions of albums, or released a deluxe edition with a couple of added tracks.