Digipak Analysis: Arctic Monkeys-Whatever people say I am, That's what I'm not

This album by the Arctic Monkeys is a conceptual album and this is shown in the simplistic design and photography that has been used when creating the digipak. The album and band name aren’t shown anywhere on the exterior of the CD case, and even inside only the album name is mentioned on the cover of the booklet that is included. 

The fact that the band name isn’t mentioned anywhere on the digipak could mean that the band don’t want to be judged or labelled by how their music sounds, as if they just want people to listen to the music on the album without being influenced by others opinions of the band.

The cover image is of a man smoking a cigarette, the photograph is in black and white and is very simple, as if its just a snapshot, this could be to represent the person or band as everyday people who do normal things and have the same problems in life as the people that listen to their music. It looks as if the man is sat against a wooden wall, perhaps in a bus stop or in a smoking area outside a nightclub or bar. 

On the back of the album is a photograph with exactly the same technical features but the man has his head in his hands, as if he’s crying or is upset, when these two images are separate its hard to see a link, but when you find out the name of the album the message becomes clearer. On the front the man is perceived as a confident young lad, who has no worries and doesn’t care what anyone thinks of him, the image on the back could be showing how the young lad feels on the inside, about deeper worries and troubles that are going on in his life. These two images only portray a message when they are linked back to the album title-whatever people say I am, That’s what I’m not.

The songs on the album can all be related to the nightclub and bar scene, such as “dancing shoes” and “I bet you look good on the dance floor” and this also relates to the appearance of the young man featured on the digipak.

The interior of the digipak continues with the simplistic and basic appearance, where the songs on the album are repeated on the inside cover. 

The image on the CD is also in black and white and looks like an image of an ashtray, I don’t think that this image is portraying a message and has been used purely to create a cool appearance to the album.

 The booklet inside the album is full of colour photographs of people that others would consider everyday normal people, for example a trainee standing on the bus or some friends eating takeaway food in the back of a taxi. All of these people are what you would see everyday, and probably wouldn’t notice, but when studying their faces it is clear that there are deeper meanings to the images. Each of the people have sad or worried faces which makes people think there is something more harrowing going on in their lives.