This is my A2 media coursework blog. I will be creating a music video for the song 'Confessions' by 'We Are The Ocean'. The project also involves creating a digipak album and a magazine advert for the digipak.

I am working in a group with:

Friday 7 January 2011

Digipak Research

[information taken and edited from the digipak wikipedia page.]
  • Digipak is a patented (registered to AGI Media) style of CD or DVD packaging.
  • Typically, it includes a 'gatefold' book style paperboard or card stock outer binding, with one or more plastic trays for CD/ DVD's. 
  • They were some of the first alternatives to 'jewel cases' which were used by major record label companies. 
  • The digipak style packaging is often used for CD singles or special editions of albums, and DVD digipak is used as a  premium DVD package and sets. 
  • They gained recognition with record labels and artists in the early 2000's and ever since then they have been gaining more and more popularity.
  • They tend to be less resistant to abrasion and damage than jewel cases which is a negative to using this style of packaging. 
  • However they are good for the environment and are manufactured using materials that reduce environmental impact, they are more recyclable than  most other methods of casing. They use materials such as recycled bottles for the plastic trays and many printers use recycled or sustainable material for the paper boards. 
  •  Originally digipak was only available in large quantities however, AGI have introduced a different method for the consumer market. 


  • Someone from 'WEWOW' (a local media packaging solutions company) came and gave us a talk about what they do, these are a few notes about them...
  • Polycarbonate (which they make jewel cases from) is too expensive and also download is taking over so this is why digipak's are produced. 
  • They are currently working on producing a disk that reduces the impact to the environment, this should be in use within the next couple of years, they are always thinking and working on new ideas that are getting better for the environment and by 2013 they want to have vastly reduced their carbon emissions. 
  • Shipping is the biggest costing for them and it’s considerably more than the production of the packages themselves. 
  • They have their own in house design team to talk about the product that they are producing for the band. However, bands normally come to them with their own design already planned out and usually it just needs a bit of tweaking before it can be made. 
  • They have also started to use and include ‘QR code's' on their packaging, these can be used with smart phones and can link people to a bands website or Facebook/ Myspace/ Twitter page etc. 
  • People are very interested in trying new things and buying something different and they have come up with a spiral shaped idea for packaging (“wowspiral”) this doesn’t use any glue and it’s fun and easy to use. 
  • Keane’ a British alternative rock band asked them to produce several thousand jewel case and also a few digipak’s as well so they could be part of a special limited edition and more people would want to buy them. 
  • They also recommended that the cover flows from front to back and right through the middle of it, so there should be a common theme that connects each side of the digipak

WEWOW's website - http://wewow.co.uk/


Typical items to be found on a digipak case..
  • Lots of high quality pictures
  • Band name/ logo
  • Record label (possibly their logo)
  • 1 or more slots for the CD's or DVD's
  • Booklet
  • Lyrics (quite often creatively shown, e.g. maybe to look like it's someone's handwriting).
  • Thank you's/ credits to family, friends and people that have helped them to create the product.
  • Track-listing (possibly with the timings) 
  • A Barcode
  • The record label's/ band's website and fan pages
  • Copyright notices
  • Publishing/ releasing codes
  • Possibly a poster.

1 comment:

  1. Good so far. You've taken a lot directly from wiki - denote this with a sub-heading (points from wiki [hyperlink the wiki] ABOVE instead of below the quotes
    Your analysis of specific examples, including scans (maybe a video?) is needed - again, see the cwk guide for pointers

    ReplyDelete