Ancillary Research 1: Digipak Analysis 1

This analysis is of Beyoncé's 'Lemonade' Digipak:

Colour Scheme-

Background Information

Beyoncé Knowles was born in Texas and first ensnared the public's eye when she became the lead vocalist of the R&B group Destiny's Child. She later parted from the group and followed a solo career, making her first debut album Dangerously in Love which enabled Beyoncé to become internationally famous with sold-out tours and a being awarded many music awards and also branched her career out slightly by starred in films such as Dream Girls. In 2008 she later married hip-hop recording artist Jay-Z and in late 2013 Beyoncé releasing her fifth studio album called 'Beyoncé' and in April 2016 she later released her sixth studio album 'Lemonade'.

Main Image

The main image consisted of a professionally taken image of Beyoncé herself. It is clear that the items in the photo (Beyoncé's clothing style and the object she is leaning on) are placed their deliberately which shows that everything in the photograph was placed there for a reason. The photograph has been edited, with an overlaying cooler coloured tint, giving a murky and powerful appearance.

Title

 The title is overlaid on top of the photograph, ensuring that the background image and title are both seen as individual pieces. 'Lemonade' is written in white, bold, capital letters, centralised in the middle of the album cover. The font isn't overly big which suggests that Beyoncé and her editor didn't want to distract the audience away from the main, dominant image of Beyoncé herself, as the main image conveys the theme and atheistic surrounding Beyoncé's album better then the actual title.

Font

 The font style used for the title 'Lemonade' is used as a similar style throughout the CD Album. Reference [1] studies the style of texts and say that the style of 'Lemonade' written on the front of the album uses 'Lemon Sans Rounded', a bold and non-flowery font.

Layout

The photograph is a mid shot and fills the entire front cover, we can see a small amount of a black object that Beyoncé is leaning against and with a blurry background. The title is positioned directly in the centre. The CD has the title of the album and the name of the artist in the centre black space that surrounds the hole in the middle of the CD (vinyl inspired). The back cover has a photograph of Beyoncé from the same shoot as the front cover but her head is raised. The titles of the songs on the album are written in small white writing placed at the lower centre position of the back cover.

Colour Scheme

The colour scheme consists of a range of shades from the primary and secondary colours: blue, yellow, green and brown. The album is made with cooler and pastel tones, a light angling downwards upon Beyoncé's bent down head and arms of her coat bring the top half of the album lighter colours and the bottom half with more blues and green toned colours. It is clear that the original photograph has been edited, the greener and bluer tones create a dark, influential and powerful appearance.