Digipaks: For Folk acoustic genre

KEATON HENSON

The Keaton Henson digipaks often possess a form of personalisation from the artist, usually featuring his own artworks the digipaks often look peculiar and abstract, which brings in a far more niche target audience. This genre is not designed to be universally listened to, rather to have cult followings that allow for the artist to focus purely on music rather than fame.

In forms of the publicity these digipaks create the idea of creativity and originality, for due to their irregular nature it is very obvious that a lot of thought and hard work has gone into them. Not created to showcase the star, these digipaks give a bleak and interesting feel to accompany the music.

ED SHEERAN The music of Ed Sheeran has experienced more success than

that of Keaton Henson, which Is obvious from his digipaks, as unlike Keaton they feature more star images, clearly showcasing Ed as someone to be recognised, this style of digipak also displays the same sense of creativity and individuality.

For example: His digipak for the album Plus, showed on the far left, highlights what makes Ed most recognisable, being his ginger hair, and makes it to the extreme, it’s use of less is more, much like Keaton Hensons create the idea of the album being about the music rather than the fame.

His album, X also features a simplistic straight to the point digipak almost looking hand drawn gives it the idea that it was created personally to the artist and that it will give you an original experience in music.

BEN HOWARD Much like Ed Sheeran Ben Howard as a singer songwriter has

experienced a lot of success despite the niche nature of his genre.

His album covers often feature a mesh of green and blue, likely to represent a personal stamp on them, for he is a fan of surfing, and those colours relate to this. Unlike Ed Sheeran however Ben Howard does not feature his own star image rather unique artworks.

The font ranges, specifically use of both formal and informal fonts are featured on the digipaks, for example for his album the fear seen second to the left, he uses a seemingly hand drawn font to create the idea of creativity whereas on the other albums he uses a more bold eye catching font that creates a sense of professionalism .

DAMIEN RICE

Damien Rice shares many similarities with Keaton Henson in form of his digipaks with similarities in colour, tone style and creativity.

Along with Henson a lot of the images on his digipaks are hand drawn, often inspired by artworks from the artist himself, with the colour being primarily brown and cream colours, due to the less upbeat style and tone of the music.

The fonts also reflect the idea of the artwork being hand drawn through choosing a font that appears to be more like written hand than typed fonts.

CONCLUSION In conclusion this examination into digipaks has taught me that

in order to reflect a truly accurate representation of my chosen genre I need to think more outside the box, with more creative and artistic ideas for the digipak.

I should probably work on my sketching skills. Also I have learned that I should prioritise one chosen colour

rather than a mesh of them, preferable something darker and less obvious. This will create more of an independent feeling in the cover.

Also as much of it as possible should appear to be hand written, to give the illusion that it has been drawn, possible to make it seem more special to the audience for it makes it seem as though it has been made especially for them.