Digi-Pack analysis on Kanye West’s ‘College Dropout’ and ‘Graduation’.
Digi-pack’s, also known as album covers are massively important in promoting musicians material. In recent times they’ve slightly lost their influence due to the growing popularity of online streaming sites; However the releasing of an album cover and layout brings excitement to the artists fans and reveals a lot about their direction.
Kanye West is an important figure within in the industry, most notably for the diversity of each of his albums, which is why I’ve decided to pick two of his Covers to analyse.
‘College Dropout’, 2004, Roc-A-Fella Records.
College dropout was the debut album of the Chicago born artist. The album name is dedicated to himself, a young man who dropped out of college to focus on something that he wanted to do.
It was seen as a very bold marketing strategy from himself to not include his own face, or album name on the front cover of his album. Considering this is his debut album and other than production credits, he wasn’t a household name in the industry yet. However the risk duly paid off, the bear shown on the cover to the left came to be known as the ‘College dropout bear’ and featured in the next 2 albums released by West. The name paved the way for a trilogy relating to school, i.e. ‘Late Registration’ and ‘Graduation.’ West, dressed as the bear/mascot is posing a very glum stance, which is ironic considering the look of the costume. On the outside we see a glum brown colour with a sort of golden frame putting more focus on the bear in the middle. The colour Gold is associated with wealth and power, two things associated with the rap/Hip Hop genre, however the glum posture in the middle, not displaying West’s face is breaking the usual conventions of album covers in this genre, where artists are seen showing their wealth in some way or another. This tells a lot about the artist and creates the connotation that he’s not doing this for money. This is also displayed through the musical content in the album, based on racial inequality in America. 
To the left we see the back page of the album cover. You can tell by the style of writing and the font that he is a creative person, and has put some thought into the Digi-Pack rather than just detailing the tracks on the back. Although he recruited Eric Duvauchelle, who at the time was design director at Nike, Kanye is known as an artist who has a very hands on approach to his projects. Again the colours aren’t the most appealing, but the wooden sort of colour gives it a natural fill. The brown circle in the middle is supposed to represent a tree, connoting that the records placed in them are natural and long lasting. This sort of imagery is counter typical to what we usually see from artists, especially in the early 2000’s where Hip Hop had moved slightly away from a reliance on meaningful lyrics.
Inside the album, we actually do see an image of Kanye, holding the bear’s head mask. This is again notifying the audience that he really is a college dropout, yet he’s achieving his dreams. This is actually quite a negative representation of West, as his fans still in school may be wrongly influenced. The angels to the side of him relates to his religious values, as he see’s God as the reason he survived his near fatal car crash in 2003, which actually increased the level of publicity he received and inspired him to move from just being a producer and actually release his own material. Obviously his religious values give him a more positive image. The San-serif font gives the artwork a more classical look, which is counter-typical of the Hip Hop genre.
One thing that our group have taken from this digi-pack is the importance of creating an attractive way of presenting the track list, rather than just listing tracks. Despite our song and album being in a different genre, there is still a lot of ideas we can fit into our Digi-pack due to the counter typical nature of it. For example we also want to represent the artist we’ve chosen as creative.
Graduation, 2006, Roc Nation.
Graduation is the Third studio album of Kanye West, completing the trilogy of his albums, named College Dropout and Late Registration. You will see a huge binary opposite between his first release which has already been talked about, and this one. It was designed with famous Japanese anime designer Takashi Murakami.
Straight away we see a stark contrast to the College dropout layout. We see the bear, featured in all three of the trilogy’s albums, however this time we see it’s been animated, suggesting West has adapted to the changing times not only in graphics but music too. The drum work in this album has been done electronically due the enhanced technology, however his two previous had more natural sounding beats. The colour pallet on show is very appealing to the eye due to its brightness. West, not for the first time, decides not to place the album name, nor his own name on the front cover, which is a unique trait that sets apart all 7 of his albums from others. In recent years, major artists such as Drake have decided to copy that style.
Surprisingly, Kanye west decides not to even place a track list on the back of this album, creating an enigma. In this image we just see the front cover image reversed. You can see graduation hats dotted around, which creates the link between the image and the album title. The image is trying to connote Kanye breaking off from the pack and graduating into the Hip Hop genres hall of fame. The colour’s give it a positive feel, which also reflects the musical content of this album. The yellow and pink colours being displayed are counter typical of the Hip Hop genre in the way that they’re quite feminine, which again gives West a unique image, something he likes.
Inside the album, you see fold out panels containing these images. This is something we’ll consider when making our Digi-packs, as we also want to images that are easy to look at and interests the artist’s fans. On the image to the right, we see what looks like a sort of university, again keeping the artwork relevant to the message behind the album. The animations are again connoting the audience how much the world has evolved. The switch to this cartoon theme also suggests that Kanye has developed a new style as an artist, which is a positive representation of the artists is it shows he isn’t someone bound within the conventions of his genre.
This, like the first Digi-Pack analysed, have helped give the group some pointers as to how we should set lay out our album covers. They’re both covers that have a lot of meaning behind, yet are completely relevant to the title, which is a difficult skill.
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