Front Cover
Adele Digipak
20th October 2015
The front cover of the album "21" by Adele uses a close up shot to show a melancholy expression on Adele's face. This shows the overall emotion of the songs featuring on the album, as they are written from Adele's personal experience of love and heartbreak. Viewers and listeners may create a personal identity (Uses and Gratifications) with this, and may relate to the lyrics in the songs. Richard Dyer would describe Adele as a star, as she is "both ordinary and extraordinary", as she experiences the same feelings as other people, but makes millions of pounds out of her emotions. Using an image of the artist is conventional for pop albums, as it allows for immediate recognition of the artist and therefore the album. This draws attention of potential buyers and therefore encourages more sales.
The black and white effect layered over the image of Adele emphasies the sad emotional feeling of the album. By having "21" conveyed in a green colour, Adele conveys an optimistic feeling, as writing and producing the album helped her to get over the break up that inspired every song. This colour runs through the album, as the CD is also coloured the same, linking everything together.
The large typography makes her name and album title stand out, particularly because of the colour choice. White writing is bold and eye-catching against the dark background, which attracts the audience's attention, as Adele is widely popular. The thin, san serif font looks professional and classy, but also youth appealing, attracting a wide audience.
Back Cover
The theme of black and white continues throughout the album covers, to keep the melacholy feeling, reflecting the journey of sadness through all of the songs. The typography remains the same, san serif, capitalised and white. This makes the titles of the songs stand out against the background, making them easy to read and recognise. The colour green also continues, highlighting the number of each track, as well as "BONUS TRACKS", which helps to differentiate each song.
At the bottom of the back cover is some web addresses and extra information, which isn't on the front as they would detract attention away from the simplicity of the front cover. The barcode is also on the back for this reason, making the album cover conventional, as many others also take this approach.
Differing from the front cover, Adele is looking straight in to the camera. On the front cover however she's looking downwards with her eyes mostly closed. The difference here shows her reflection of the relationship at the start and her sadness over missin it. On the back cover, by looking up, it appears she's found closure through the production of her songs.
CD
The CD is vastly different in comparison to the covers of the album, as it is a bright green (the colour that is placed discretely on the covers). This contrasts the black and white theme of the rest of the album. By having a bright CD, the decoration is attractive and appealing, implying the songs are enjoyable and worth listening to. The white writing of "21" helps the CD become easily identifiable, as well as standing out against the green (similar to standing out against the black on the covers). The numbers are san serif, like the other writing within the album, making it seem more modern and youthful, reflecting the title and Adele's age. It also looks hand written, which reflects Adele's talented writing skills and the fact that she wrote all the songs on the album.
By being quite plain and simple, the CD reflects the album cover, which isn't covered in decoration, but simply an image. By being simplistic, the CD shows the stripped back value of the album and the straight forward ideology of every song - heartbreak.