Research for Ancillary Products... Required Look for a Digipak

This is a typical example of a digipak, it is the Jack Johnson album in between dreams. Allows have been placed at the most important parts that the digipak should consist of. Let's work in a clockwise direction on the right side of the spine where the front cover is. The artist's name: needs to be large, clear and foregrounded. It is important that the tex is clear to read, usually best to use the same font throughout the digipak. The next two arrows both point to the promotional stickers, they are usually there to mainly draw attention to a recent tour or a specific detail on the album like bonus tracks etc.
Now moving on to the back cover, the three bottom arrows outline the production information, usually this consists of: copyright; year of production. Web address; record label logo/name and last but not least distributor, producer, and sometimes possibly the price. The last arrow points to track listing. It is conventional to use the same font for the track listing that was used to write the artist name or the album name.

This particular example reflects a very different style of music as you can see there is no artist photograph anywhere on there, this is not the case for most covers, it normally all comes down to the genre. For my artist I will have to use a picture of the artist because it is her first album and I have to create a good promotional package. This example of Katie Melua echoes her visual style as well as the colour scheme chosen for the front cover.

Here is a shortlist of the overall digipak style: uses 3-4 colours max, normally there should be no more that 2 types of fonts, it's impressive for the digipaks to contain some sort of interesting graphic design not just simple extracts from the video. When creating the digipack it is important to reflect on your styles right away, planning proves itself to become a large part of this as later it will have to be linked with the advertisement in the magazine.

WHAT MUST THE INSIDE OF THE DIGIPAK LOOK LIKE?

The graphic design like the visual style (font, colour and design) created on the cover of the digipak, the theme should continue throughout the inner panels also. Sometimes acknowledgements are included this is usually done in a form that isn't too outstanding they are written in short list, very discrete, small font and just simply used for particular tracks of the album. Sometimes a repeat of the tracklist can be included with more specific details about the songs like who played the instruments, who created the rules etc.

WHAT SHOULD THE ADVERTISEMENT LOOK LIKE?

MUST INCLUDE RELEASE DATE! The advertisement usually features an image of the digipak itself.  Always use a prominent display of the artist name and album title. It should generally repeat the same graphic style of the digipak. Often can also include:

• Tour dates
• Review quotes in magazines and newspapers
• Record Label Logo 
• Website