Tom Odell - CD Analysis

As Tom Odell does not have any digipaks that he has released i'm going to do an analysis of his CD album. On the front cover of his album 'Long Way Down' Tom Odell is standing in a cobbled street. This is a simple, free, setting to fit the low budget theme of an indie pop album. This is because the marketing side of promoting this artist is on a low budget. The photo on the front cover has a shot looking all the way down a street but the other side of the street is slightly out of focus/ blurred. This goes with the name 'Long Way Down' and maybe there is a long road to go down his path of life. I think this long street has connotations of what the song is about. In this photo Tom Odell is wearing a dark green jacket and blue shirt, his has also got scruffy hair and is not surrounded by materialistic items. This is a generic convention of indie pop artists as they often wear dark clothing and are not trying to be someone they are not by wearing designer clothing having groomed hair etc. The typography on the front cover of his album is all in capital letters. The artists name is next to the album title however they are in different colours to show that they are different. The text 'Tom Odell' in in brown and the album title 'Long Way Down' in in white. The reason they are both the same size and next to each other is because he is not trying to promote his album but also he is promoting himself as an artist.

On the back cover of this album, the background photo is of a brick wall. This is to also re-enforce the genre of indie pop by having the generic convention of a low budget location. The wall has graffiti on it and looks old, this is to show that it is a real location and to not make it look like an on set, fake wall. You can then see a tiny bit of Tom Odell leaning against this wall but you can not see his face. He is wearing the same clothes as he wore in the front cover which suggests he is leaning on a wall down the same street as the photo on the front cover. On the right hand side of the back cover there are a list of the songs on this album. They are all in bold capital letters and are white on top of a brown background to make them stand out a lot. This is to promote each song on the album. By promoting Tom Odell's songs it also promotes him as a singer song writer. The barcode is located in the bottom right hand corner of the album, this is so that it does not take up a lot of the album. Next to this in small writing there is white text talking about Sony Music Entertainment and above the bare code there is bigger writing saying 'Sony Music', this is all to promote Sony as a company. This is because they are the company who are making it possible for Tom Odell to release his music to a mass amount of people. Although Tom Odell is an indie pop artist he has a mainstream record label releasing his music.

By analysing Tom Odell's CD cover this will help me when I come to making my digipak cover. This is because the digipak I will design will be promoting the song by Tom Odell called Grow Old With Me. As we are making our artist very similar by being of the genre indie pop as he needs to look like he is potentially singing the song, we will take inspiration for our digipak by looking at this album. For example I will ensure that the locations are low budget and our artist is wearing dark, simple clothing. I will have a simple text and make sure that the name of the artist is in bold to promote him.