Analysis of a Digipak - Rihanna

Research - Task 9 (part 2)

Loud is the fifth studio album released by pop-artist Rihanna. It was released on November 12th 2010, by Def Jam Recordings and SRP Records. Rihanna was the executive producer of Loud and worked with various record producers including StarGate, Sandy Vee, The Runners, Tricky Stewart and Alex da Kid. The record features several guest artists, including rappers Drake, Nicki Minaj and Eminem.
The album is starkly diverse from Rihanna's 2009 album, Rated R, which revolves around a foreboding, angry tone and dark themes. Loud features up-beat pop genres, ranging from R&B and dance-pop to electro music. It also incorporates rock in "California King Bed" and reggae in the Caribbean inspired "Man Down".
Loud received generally positive reviews from music critics, who complimented its upbeat material and Rihanna's vocal performances. The album was a commercial success internationally; it debuted at number 3 on the US Billboard 200 chart, with first week sales of 207,000 copies, the highest first week sales of her career at the time. As of November 2011, it had sold over 8 million copies worldwide.

The front cover for Rihanna's digipak is an extreme close-up shot of the artist's face, looking down away from the camera. This is unconventional for a pop-artists's front cover, as they usually are featured using direct address so that they can directly target their audience through eye contact. This therefore encourages the audience to purchase the artist's products as the artists has made a connection with them and creates the impression that the artist is pursuing their audience personally.
Rihanna is also featured wearing a full face of makeup, which is quite minimal except her bold rep lip which attracts her audience's attention. The bold lipstick colour matches her brightly dyed hair, and the colour red commonly connotes danger and love, implying that these themes may be heavily present throughout her album. This colour also connotes femininity, which suggests that this album will be more conventional of a pop-artist and revolve around feminine themes such as romance and love.

This idea is reinforced by the graphology used on her CD, and the images included within the digipak. On the CD itself, Rihanna has covered the disc with an image of a yellowy-pink coloured rose, which holds connotations of love and romance. This will help to market her product to her audiences as Saussure's research into semiotics states that signifiers, such as the image of a rose used on the CD, create connotations (known as signified) such as love and passion which help to draw out emotions from the audience and create a connection with them.

In the inside images, Rihanna is featured in a spread of 3 photos lying across a bed of red roses. This reinforces the feminine and loving theme that is running throughout this digipak, suggesting that the infamous 'bad girl' image Rihanna has previously portrayed herself as is now long forgotten.

This aesthetic is continued onto the back cover of Rihanna's digipak, as the main colour scheme is cream, light yellow and peachy-pink tones which holds connotations of positivity, innocence and purity, which is then contrasted with her bright red hair, symbolising that this album may still contain hints of danger and her previous 'bad girl' themes. The small hint of red continues in the typography used on the back cover, as the tracklist is written in red, sans-serif font which stands out against the cream background.