The Digipak I am currently analysing is Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge by artist My Chemical Romance. The band are Alternative Rock artists and this is made clear through their Digipak. The band name My Chemical Romance connotes ones addiction to drugs and romance. The use of the word 'my' adds a personal touch to the band allowing us to have a personal relationship with the band. This already invites a particular target audience such as rebels. By looking at the band name, we are immediately able to recognise that it is a band rather than a solo artist. The album name generates ideas associated with moral evil and corrupt human nature. From this, I can gather that the content of the album will based on the themes connoted from the album name. From both Digipak analysis' Ive learnt that albums that belong to the rock genre are usually named after strange & mysterious themes keeping most people from comprehending the content. The dark themes that root from the band name and album name are reflected and reinforced via the aesthetic appearance of the Digipak.
Rather than focusing on the bands personal image, the Digipak artist chooses to focus on an animation as the central dominant image, indicating that the album is based on stories that may have a distant unrealistic story behind them. The animation is a closeup of a couple with jet black hair, pale faces and blood on their faces. The jet black hair, pale faces and blood could link in with the Emo-subculture again inviting a certain group of people. The rough black background reinforces darkness, emptiness and hopelessness. As an audience we have a distant relationship with the band. The band member images are present at the back of the album booklet as well as cover. The album booklet consists of individual boxes per band member and the lead singer is at the centre. The fact that every band member is wearing black could indicate that they are mourning or trying to blend in with the background representing emoes. Lastly, the back cover of the album consists of a full image of the band with a white background. The white background represents peace, and innocence and the black outfits contrast this suggesting there is a lack of innocence within the album. The midshot of the band is at a normal angle, creating a sense of distance and the band members are posing with their legs apart whilst staring at the camera. This indicates a sense of unmoving firmness possibly representing character types of the band.
The album's over all appearance is mainly dependent on the colour scheme of the digipak. The digipak is mainly, black, white and red. Again the the three colour, colour scheme highlights and attracts an older target audience (14+) particularly, members of the emo subculture as these colours are mainly work by them, and will therefore appeal to them. The cd compartment is in the form of a comic book strip again reflecting the comical dramatic theme of the album. Towards the back of the booklet the sentence 'A story of a man, a woman and the corpses of a thousand evil men' also, reinforces the mythical theme of the album.
Here, i've noticed that the font of the band name is different to the other font on Digipak with other details. The bands name is written in a mixture of capital and lower case letters in white font. Each letter is of a different size giving it a rough informal look. The fact that the band are represented with informal font reflects and represents the band on the whole and attracts a similar target audience. The use of the bold white font for the front of the Digipak allows the bands name to stand out, as it is the largest form of the font on the page. This suggests that the bands name is the best method to draw attention and promote their music. On the CD, the band name is in red with a red dagger icon near it. The red name+ logo stands against the white background keeping the CD simple and easy to spot but also simply conveying the message related to blood, death and evil. The rest of the font is formal but not as eye catching as it is just about clear to read. This again indicates that the Digipak is dependent on the band name rather than the album name like most Digipaks and the font representing the band also indicates the genre of their music.
The CD is produced by engineer and producer Howard Benson. This appeals to the audience because Benson has produced music for other rock bands previously. This could attract fans of those bands and My Chemical Romance fans may be interested in other music produced by Benson. The band is part of Reprise records, founded by Frank Sinatra. This suggests that the record label isn't only one that signs rock musicians but a mixture, as it was founded by a Jazz singer. This may also encourage other fans that may listen to musicians signed to Reprise records, to listen to My Chemical Romance.
The band image is reinforced through the aesthetics including colour scheme, images, font style and also, the content of the text. These aspects attract a particular target audience 15-20-mainly teenagers. The comical look to the CD may invite comic book fans as well as alternative rock fans. The Digipak artist has insured that the parental advisory logo is visible at the front of the Digipak and the bar code is visible at the back. This clearly highlights the fact that there is be explicit content and violent references.
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