Digipak and Promotional Poster Deconstruction - Sundara Karma

Digipak Deconstruction, Sundara Karma - Youth Is Only Ever Fun In Retrospect:

Front Panel:

The dark blue monochrome themed casing of the CD again provides an indication to their indie rock style of music. Similarly, their choice to use a centred graphic design in prominence and small titles in either corner of the CD, displaying their band name, highlights the importance of the music over the self-indulgent artist. The design highlights, in particular, lead singer Oscar Pollock's, self-expression with the design seemingly abstract and open to interpretation. The holographic disk itself is highly visually appealing and appears a variety of colours in different lights. One could also assimilate that the holographic CD had been chosen to metaphorically represent the bands logo and name (which is a sun) by reflecting and creating beams of light not too dissimilar from the sun.

Inside Panel and CD:

It could be noted that the band have chosen to include photographs of themselves within the album cover booklet; as evidenced through the photograph of the bassist within a haze of cigarette smoke. The cover booklet stereotypically contains information about the band, therefore if a fan choses to buy the album they can listen and appreciate the music and then find out about the artist post listening to the album to avoid subjectivity; reaffirming the view that the indie genre is mostly about highlighting the importance of music. These images are highly colloquial, as if the artist was blissfully unaware that they were being captured, which creates an element of normalcy to the band and makes them more relatable to their audience, as they are simply just ordinary friends enjoying themselves and following their passions. The black leather jacket, as worn by the bassist in the photograph, could be seen as 'standard uniform' for members of indie bands, as this is a recurring stylistic choice that you can see in many indie bands from decades ago, up until now. The black jacket connotes the darker lyrics and slightly more rock and alternative threads of indie music, and the leather jacket connotes themes of rebellion and carelessness - linking to the independence which can be derived from the title of 'indie'.

Back Panel:

The back panel of the album adheres to the convention that albums contain a track-list for the album. It also features all of the record label and copyright information, along with the barcode and the bands logo.

Promotional Poster Deconstruction:

The promotional magazine advertisement cleverly mirrors the cover of the album, meaning if a reader of sed magazine went past the album, they would recognise the unique design and associate it with the advertisement they had seen; increasing the likelihood of them purchasing it after seeing the good reviews displayed on the poster. The reviews are carefully aligned around the circle in the middle creating a circular pattern, with each piece of critics text veering off in different directions like sunbeams, thus mirroring their sun logo. The purposeful choices of the best reviews possible, such as 8/10, infer to a viewer that the band have good critical reviews and therefore must be good. The albums title is aligned at the top of the poster in a capitalised serif title. The white typeface contrasts the navy blue background, with the choice of a serif typeface appearing 'vintage', which links to word 'retrospect' in the title and represents the bands indie vintage aesthetic.