[JB] Deconstruction of Digipak

Genre

How is the genre of the track/artist evident?

The digipak design is evident of the alternative rock genre. The visual elements of the image are representative of the rebellious culture of rock. Grenades are seen as rebellious because of their violent and dangerous connotations, and this grenade is being held up in the air by a fist - a sign of success, or maybe some sort of uprising, which is again representative of the rebelliousness. The grenade is also in the shape of a heart, which connotes love. The blood dripping from the grenade, however, could be connoting some sort of violence or inappreciation of life. It shows that the hand has just torn this heart from a living being.

Media Language

What visual techniques are used? (rule of thirds, texture, colour, tone, mise-en-scene)

How is meaning generated through these techniques? (semiotics)

What linguistic devices have been used? (look at emotive language, use of quotations, connotations of song/album title)

Is there any intertextuality/references to popular culture? How does this create meaning for the audience? Think about postmodernism here, use of parody, pastiche.

This digipak follows perhaps one of the most conventional rules of graphic design - the rule of thirds. The arm and clenchefist design is most prominent at the heart/grenade, and this point lies on one of the thirds. There is a perfect amount of space to the left of the grenade for the artist name and the title of the album. The reading path of this illustration is as follows: the eye first looks straight at the heart, then the blood on the heart, then the fact that it is in a clenched fist, then the realisation that the heart is a grenade, followed by looking at the large white writing in the top left saying “Green Day”. The artist’s name is written in very bold white capitals so they contrast with the background and stand out as very prominent. They are intentionally the next thing that the viewer sees after the illustration of the grenade, so that people understand who the album has been produced by.

Representation

How are the band/artist represented? Does this add to their ‘meta-narrative’ in any way? How does it help sell their product?

Here, the artist is not shown directly on the cover. In terms of Dyer’s Paradoxes, the stars are absent rather than present, meaning they conform to the paradoxes only to some extent. The only presence of the artist is the bold white writing saying “Green Day”.

Institution and Audience

How might this print text be consumed? How is this evident in the way it is constructed?

This design is for use on a digipak, which will generally be on sale in a record shop such as HMV. It is designed to stand out as much as possible in comparison to the other CDs on the shelf and does so by having a very simplistic design which is easily recognisable and thus associated with the artist.