Dizzee Rascal - Showtime

In order to try and understand the concept behind creating a digipak for an artist I began by looking through my collection of music albums. I wanted to see how in this case Dizzee Rascal's album keeps a house style and connotes his type of music genre, which is a blend of rap and pop. 

Front

 Here is the front cover for the album Showtime, this was released in 2004 and is seen as the album which kick started his career. The cover is simple, yet effective as the dark background and vibrant colours contrast with each other, this essentially makes the album clear to the audience when it is on the shelf at music stores amongst many other albums. The font used for his name and album title connote an idea of a west-end show, or the typical style of neon signs in Las Vegas on nightclubs and casinos. This style matches the title Showtime as many neon signs advertise shows and this style of font is a classic yet modern theme in recent music albums and videos. The matching colours of red and yellow also creates a more professional image as they do not clash, yet they carefully make the cover bold enough to be noticed. The clothing worn by Dizzee Rascal connotes his style of music, as the baseball jacket and loose jeans are often associated with the rap genre. The red sleeves of the jacket also follow the colour theme used for his album cover. 

Back

The back of the album is again relatively simple in design, but has the colours to make it stand out easily. Another neon style font has been used for the track list which is simple to read, and large enough to make the back cover bold and attractive. Typical digipak conventions are seen on the back cover, these being a bar code and the record label's name. In this case the record company is XL RECORDINGS LTD and is seen beneath the bar code; which is needed for all album covers as it allows the shop selling it to scan the item and therefore let the record company know how many have been sold. 

Inside

This is the inside of the digipak for Showtime. This follows the theme used on the front and back covers as it is very simple, with a dark background and the red and yellow font. The CD imitates the front cover so that when the user is playing the CD they can easily tell which digipak it belongs to. The left panel shows the copyright legislation of the digipak, along with a personal message from Dizzee Rascal to his mother, fans and artists he collaborated with to make the album, part of it reads "First up I wanna thank god for makin this possible and also my mum for being so strong through a lot of bullshit I love you". The font used here seems to be a standard font as it is legal content, and needs to be clear to read so no copyright is committed. The right hand side of the left panel is part of a photo of Dizzee Rascal, it is shot from inside a broken window, which may represent his broken past.