Digipak Analysis

Coldplay - Viva La Vida (or Death and All His Friends)

Viva La Vida is Coldplay's fourth album, the digipak contains the front and back page, middle panes, a booklet and a CD in its own individual cardboard slip; all of the items included in this digipak are very redundant and expected. The artwork on the front of the digipak is very unusual, it is from Eugéne Delacroix he named it 'Liberty Leading the People' and it was painted in the 1800s. Delacroix's painting was changed slightly for the cover, a white paint brush was used to write the words 'Viva La Vida' over the painting. It is an unusual choice for cover art and represents a sense of freedom, which is reflected in their music and music videos. The same image of 'Liberty Leading the People' is used on the fount of the booklet. An entropic element of this digipak is that the booklet does not give the lyrics of the tracks on the album, the second page is dedicated to all of the people who helped create the music and album, which is redundant, with a small "Thank you to everyone who has helped at us." at the end. The rest of the booklet is dedicated to bright artwork the band have had made specifically for the digipak, some of the artwork contains the names of the tracks within it. This is very unusual to use the whole of a booklet soley for artwork, also you wouldn't expect this of a rock band. In one of the artwork the quote "Lord lead us not into temptation" is used which is very entropic in the digipak of a rock band.

There are two images of the band: one is a group photo of them recording, they are all sat in a line and not looking directly at the camera this gives a sense of equality among the band as it is not made clear which is the lead singer if you have not heard of them before. The other image is four separate photos, one for each of the band members, each member is playing their instrument and not looking directly at the camera. There are different shots for each member; a low shot, a high shot, slightly off centre and centre shot. Again no band member is made more significant than the others, both of the images are in a sepia tone which is considered more redundant in the rock genre now for example both Mumford and Sons and You Me At Six are considered Rock bands and they also use sepia tints. The text on the digipak is mostly capitalised, however does not take up much space, and most is in a light brown colour,     

this complements the sepia tone and makes the text stand out against the black background. The graphic designers may have decided that a large font was not needed as the text already stood out enough without making it huge.