Digipak- Star/ Icons

According to Andrew Goodwin, one convention of a music video is the 'star image'. This means that the artist is the centre of attention, with lots of close ups and the focus is on them as an individual. As the music video and digipak are closely connected, it makes sense that the star will also feature on the album cover. A few examples can be seen below. 

However, this convention seems only popular in the pop genre. We found very few indie bands that use close ups as cover art, instead they tend to use illustrations or photographs of important icons from their music. We think this style of cover artwork would be more appropriate considering we are producing a narrative video rather than a performance video which would focus around the star. 

Here are a few artists that have incorporated symbolism and iconography into their digipak. 

Bombay Bicycle Club consistently reference space and the
moon in their music, they even have a song titled 'Luna',
which is why they chose the lunar cycle as their main icon
on their digipak. 

This image has a fairly explicit meaning on Amber Run's front
cover, the key relates to the single 'I Found', a universal symbol
has been used to illustrate the son. 

'Listen' by the Kooks is a new album which features many emotional
songs written by Luke Pritchard, the lead singer. Several of the songs
are written for his father and family members, the image on the front
is to show the heartfelt nature of the music.

As our music falls under the 'indie' genre, we will not be promoting the 'star image'. Instead, we will be using some form of iconography, possibly taking still shots of our video and converting them into sketches/ drawings. The most significant elements are nature, the army and female empowerment. We will have to think of a way of incorporating one or more of these into a single artwork. I like the idea of drawing the landscape shot from the top of Primrose Hill, it is a striking image and will be another selling point; people may buy the digipak purely because it features London.