Risk assessment

Magazine research for appropriate digipak advert

In this section i will be researching magazines based on the genre of my music video. The magazines i have looked at are urban based magazines and also pop magazines. The magazines I have selected to be the most appropriate are RWD (www.rwdmag.com), XXL (www.xxlmag.com) and Q (www.qthemusic.com)

Q magazine seems to cover the majority of music genre's vaguely but specialises in pop music.

Digipak adverts can be found in all 3 of these magazines, and my digipak would be of a suitable genre to be published in either of them. 

After more thorough research I discovered that there are several key things that are included on a advert for a digipak. Several things that are re-occurring are:

• A retailer or a list of retailers that the digipak is sold in
• The artists website
• The record labels website
• The Song title, or a list of singles found on the album
• Album name
• Copyright logo
• Available to download on iTunes
• Album cover artwork as background picture

 These are all things i am going to have to consider when designing my advert for my digipak.

Digipak Research

Digipaks 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. digipaks can also be made from eight parts. 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.

Digipaks were first created by MeadWestvaco, and their product, called Digi-Pak, is trademarked. However, as the format became more popular and began to be used by more manufacturers, the generic "digipak" came to be used to describe all soft CD packaging.

Digipaks pro's and con's:

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

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

• The trays in digipaks 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 digipak, the CD falls out of the bottom of the digipak, because unlike jewel cases, there is nothing to hold it in.

• Digipaks 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.

  Digipaks look great, but if you're just starting out and money is tight, looking for ways to cut your manufacturing costs is important.
  

  Digipak dimensions:

  4 panel 1 CD Digipak. Tray on right. 5.531" X .25" X 4.9375"

  
  

6 panel 1 CD Digipak . Tray originally meant for right side but can be placed on center panel as well. 5.594" X .3125" X 4.9375"

After researching many digipaks first hand, I have decided that there are a list of things that it must contain on the covers. These things are:

• Bar Code
• Copyright logo
• song/album name or artists name
• Music label's name/logo

There are also many desirable features such as:

• Painted artwork
• Cartoon imagery
• photographic artwork
• Images of artists
• Song related artwork
• Songlist
• Magazine reviews
• Website URL