Digipak Analysis - Sinners Never Sleep by You Me At Six

You Me At Six are a pop-punk band and this is a digipak for their third album. This digipak's style is related to the video for their song Loverboy, which takes place in a police interrogation room. 

The cover is taken up by a photograph of someone holding an ID board from a mugshot, on this is written the title. Although we can't see who is holding the board they are styled in a black tank top and black nail polish, punk trends the audience would recognise. The whole digipak is in a slightly tinted black and white, instantly recognisable as a punk colour palette. The pictures are all quite grainy and give it a tough, gritty look.

The back pane is a tracklist and copyright information etc. This is in the same font as the album title, which is quite plain and official. The text is white on the black background, so that the outside of the digipak is overall very dark. This is a feature all albums have and is very predictable.


The other pane on this side is a band photo, another feature that almost all albums contain. The picture is taken against a badly hung white background, so that the set up looks careless and parodies very produced band photos. The image is very high contrast and uses low key lighting, this creates a lot of shadows and emphasises the black and white. The band are looking out at the viewer confrontationally, with the lead singer in the forefront. These panes are all quite redundant and what you would expect, styled in a similar way to many punk albums.

The 3 interior panes of the digipak are covered by one photograph. The criminal theme is continued, the image looks like a desk covered in information and evidence. There are photofit sections of faces, which refer to the ID cards also included in the pack. There are sheets with the fingerprints of the band members, this is something that would appeal to the fans as they are personal and would make the fans feel closer to the artists. The sheets in the image are messy and disorganised, showing the chaos the band have created. This section again makes use of photographs within the image, one of the panels is taken up with another picture of the band. This picture is more natural, with the band in an abandoned industrial building, this is a typical grungy location for punk and rock bands. The picture is very shadowed and you can barely see the artists faces, they are presenting themselves as dark and mysterious.

The digipak includes a lyrics booklet, with another band photograph on the cover. The picture is very conventional and could be any rock or punk band. The lighting is very low key, leading to a dark shadowy image. The picture is taken from a low angle  and is quite a wide shor, showing most of their body, this makes them tower over the viewer, a traditional 'rockstar' pose. The lyrics are printed very simply in a grid, using a typewriter font to make it look like a formal police report. This booklet is very redundant and the lyrics haven't been used in a very interesting way, compared with Damien Rice's illustrations where the lyrics were a part of the pictures.

The CD and DVD use the same two fonts for the band name and title as the cover and tracklist. Black and white is used again so that the two discs are opposites, they are very plain and un-decorated. This stripped back look works but is slightly ruined by all the copyright and recording infomation in small print on the discs.

One of the most original features of this digipak are the 5 mugshots of the band members. On the reverse of these are the band's photofits, which are very strange and humorous as they are so old fashioned and inaccurate. These pictures would appeal to the groups fans, a predominantly female audience, who would like having their own picture of favorite band member to put on their bedroom wall etc.

Overall this digipak has quite a lot of redundant features and design; the use of black and whit, the bold,capitalised text and punky band photos. The very extended theme is what makes this digipak interesting and stand out from the crowd, also some of the attention to detail such as the mugshots and fingerprints.