Album Covers and Digi-Paks

Digipacks are a type of CD packaging made out of card stock or other heavy paper/cardboard material. Digipacks can flip open like a book, or it can have three parts, so that one portion of the packaging opens to the right and one to the left, with the CD in the center portion. Usually, the portion of the digipack that hold the CD is made of plastic like a traditional jewel case CD - the plastic part is simply attached to the paper background.

What makes an Effective Digipack?

• Color schemes and pictures throughout the CD cover
• Pictures that also link with the band or either the genre

Digipacks have pros and cons:

• They look nice, and many bands and labels like to use them for aesthetic reasons. The three section digipack sleeves opens up more design options because there is more room. However, they're more expensive than traditional liner notes and jewel cases.

  
  

• Digipacks don't crack like jewel cases do, but they will rip and eventually the paper begins to peel apart and separate.

  
  

• The trays in digipacks break much more often then in jewel cases. There's not as much protection since the outer portion of made of paper, so the teeth that hold the CD in place crack and fall out easily.

  
  

• When the teeth of the tray does break in a digipack, the CD falls out of the bottom of the digipack, because unlike jewel cases, there is nothing to hold it in.

  
  

• Digipacks can be more environmentally friendly than jewel cases because they can be made of recycled paper - however, they aren't always in fact made in this way.

The reason why i have a picture of Wiz Khalifa here is to show that some digi-packs can look like a jewel cased CD but they flip out in a different way. Also this specific wiz khalifa album is made out of paper which is quite deceiving looking at the image. Another thing that is very clever about what Wiz Khalifa has done is that the Long Tattoo that is covering his arms are called 'Sleeves' his then links back to the description of the digi pack 'the three section digipack 'sleeves' opens up more design options because there is more room. This is why on 1 of the open up sleeves he has a picture of his hands showing the tattoo.