Digipak Analysis – Kings of Leon

The CD Digipak designed for Kings of Leon’s album has some very artistic vision put into it, specifically the eagle which is on the back cover as well as the front merged with several parts of the band members faces. This is giving a clear representation of their regional background being from the USA and being categorized as an American Rock Band which could be used to either market it towards Americans heavily and make big sales in their home country as well as show the world their pride as being an American rock band using the symbolic eagle for their art cover. The colours of this album are heavily greenish with black fades which I think are directly linking to the album name Only By Night showing a sort of night vision view of the art which is further supported by the crosshairs on the front cover and the record symbol on the top left of the front cover and next to the album name on the side of the cd (part of Back Cover) which confidently suggest to me that this is a night vision camera and this is probably showing the audience that this album includes some songs which have meanings that happen only by night such as Sex is on Fire which has a dark environment as well as Use Somebody which features a music video spanning a city at night, showing they may have drawn some inspiration for the album artwork and their songs from the nightlife of places.

Front Cover Back Cover

However another interpretation of the eagle could be drawn upon negatively, specifically by the back cover which shows us the eagle but with a large crosshair which seems to imply a gun is pointing at it’s head which could be showing us messages suggestive of back stabbing as the eagle is targeted from behind and generally the back cover shows a much grittier and darker look which suggests negative messages in comparison to the front which is smooth, a lot lighter and good to look at. The text for this Digipak is similar to computer coding from its fonts design and I think this is another pointer to the night vision camera again and is generally a lot smaller meaning they would rather advertise their songs with an artistic looking album with lots of artwork to look at as opposed to an album full of text to read meaning they are trying to appeal to the masses and sell their image. Obviously the merging of the band and eagle are meant to be symbolic but besides American Patriotism you could argue it is used to show the band care about animals as majestic creatures that aren’t to be abused and are equal to humans which could be suggested from the merging of people and eagle. The main thing to notice for placement of artwork and text is that they are both separated greatly from each other and easily distinguishable making it a lot easier to look at and the colour of the text is also very similar to the artwork but because they aren’t close together they are easy to see and I think this is a really good Digipak I could take inspiration from for the placement of artwork and text.