1st Digipak Ideas

1^ST Digipak Ideas

Whilst designing my first digipak, I wanted to include a trend that most people will associate with the R&B/Hip Hop industry. As I do listen to mainly R&B/Hip Hop music I am also familiar with the trends in which most of the audience like and follow. In order for it to fit in with my digipak I had decided not to choose a particular colour or prices of clothing that the audience may recognise, but instead a pose in which the audience would be able to connote the genre of my artist’s music. This pose would be the ‘Rap Squat’. From what I know of the ‘Rap Squat’, most artists within the R&B/Hip Hop industry as well as Rap industry do this as a sign to their audience that they are proud or their roots and where they were brought up. The pose is also sometimes associated with artists in this industry being proud of starting from the bottom. This would also be a perfect fit for my artist Tyla, as I wanted her background to be similar to most well-known R&B singers, where they were brought up with very little and are now able to sing about her rough childhood.

I also wanted to link this pose ‘Rap Squat, with the male gaze theory by Laura Mulveys. Instead of following this particular convention I wanted to challenge this stereotype of female artists having to please the male side of the audience more than the female side. Through making my artist pose like this, I am hoping to change the way of the male side looking at females as objects to admire and instead respecting them and so this should also cause the female groups in my target audience to want respect from men. Using this pose will also help to emphasise my star’s image, which is also a key aspect of Andrew Goodwin’s theory. I think through using this pose, the audience will also be able to connote a sense of power and dominance. As well as allowing my target audience to recognise my artist through this pose, which will also act a symbol towards her name.

When it came to decide the camera shot and image for the back of my 1^st digipak plan, I used Beyoncé’s digipak as inspiration with her back facing the camera. I think that this was powerful, as it shows that Beyoncé doesn’t need to have a picture of her face on every side of the digipak in order to keep her audience interested as well as showing just how popular she and her music is. And so I will have my artist doing a similar pose with a long shot of her walking along a basketball court fence.