Rock Digipak Analysis- Green Day: American Idiot

The conventions of the rock genre are very different to pop. This is shown on the Green Day album, which does not feature an image of the band on the album cover. The font used looks distressed, reflecting the nonchalant, rebellious attitude of the band. This appeals to their male primary target audience.
Initial inspiration for the image came from propaganda for the Communist Party of China, and then later the film poster for the Man with the Golden Arm. The image explores the line between love and hate. In the image the heart is being squeezed and shattered by the hand, causing it to bleed. The heart is also a grenade. This mixes two antithetic symbols- one of love and one of hate, suggesting that the two are very close; one leads to the other. The image suggests that love is destructive and quickly conveys the tone of the music to the audience. Furthermore red is a prominent colour on the cover. It is often used to represent passion or hate, however here it can be used for both. While the grenade and the blood immediately appeal to the target audience, women are attracted to the heart and the powerful message as a whole. Therefore the album appeals to a wide range of people.

The colour scheme of red, black and white is used throughout the digipak. The black background reflects the punk rock genre of music, and so will appeal to people whom are likely to enjoy the music. Furthermore black generally has rather negative connotations of death, loss and despair. It also highlights the bright red and white. On the back cover the track list is white. This discretely looks quite rebellious- text is usually black on a white background. By simply switching this around Green Day are showing that they don't play by the rules and are possibly more exciting than other bands. The magnifying glass suggests that they are looking for something, further implying that they are lost; perhaps they are trying to find themselves. Magnifying glasses can also reflect crime as they are used to search for clues. This reflects the band's rebellious brand.



The American Idiot disk is consistent with the cover as it depicts an image of the hand dripping with blood. This makes me think of the phrase 'caught red handed'; perhaps the crime hinted at on the back cover is in fact a crime of love. As a cartoon, while the image appeals to men who stereotypically like blood and gore, it is not actually gruesome. This stops the album from scaring away female and younger listeners. Again the CD is mostly black, reflecting the convention of rock music as quite dark. The track listing on the disk shows that the music is the most important part of the album. This contrasts to Nicki Minaj's Pink Friday- she instead has an image of herself, showing that her image is very important to her success and career.


Green Day's booklet involves the lyrics of each song on their album. Alternatively they have opted to hand write the lyrics, making it appear very messy and chaotic. This works well for their brand, as this is how they aim to come across to fans. Furthermore the little doodles and emphasised words are quite fun, and the handwriting male the booklet feel very personal and intimate. The band show that they are not trying to polish themselves up to be something they aren't.