Digi pack research 2: "American idiot" green day

We can see the front of the digipak for Green day's 'American idiot'. The band’s name is written in a huge font and in white writing to make it stand out on the black background creating contrast, this showing the importance of the band and the album name which is  in red for the same effect of making it stand out. The black background is a very conventional look for the rock genre. The black look is also very popular with the band's and genre's demographic, which will have been likely to have played a part in making the background black due to the research they would of conducted. The image displayed on the digipak shows somebody holding a heart-shaped grenade, which has a red liquid dripping from it, which can easily be interpreted as blood. Although the images on the cover do not reveal the meaning of the songs. This front cover album which consists of three main colours, red white and black amplifies the theme of anger and rage. Red is a colour of passion, unity and love but at the same time could also be seen as a colour of rage, destruction and bloodshed, whereas white could be used to represent peace and tranquillity, the background consists of black, which allows the contrasting colours to stand out more, although the black background could be argued that it creates a sense of loneliness as well.

As the album is mostly politically motivated, it is only natural that the band would also use the images on their album art to portray the same message they do in their lyrics. The heart shaped grenade can represent many things. For example, the grenade represents war, Americans fighting in the war. The heart can also represent the passion the soldiers have for their country and the pride they have fighting for it.). Another way which the image can be viewed is that the heart-shaped grenade represents the heart of the American public, it's very delicate but if tampered with can be very dangerous, and the white forearm representing the American government, the message which Green day are symbolizing is that the government have the heart of the public gripped firmly in their hands, the grenade means that the government have the power to destroy the heart at just the pull of a pin. The back of the digipak shows the conventional song listing along with record labels and parental advisory.

As mentioned before, parental advisory has been included in the digipak, this is because Green day
are known for being a very controversial band and some parents may be offended having their children listen to their product due to some of the lyrics and language in a few of the tracks, however in attempt to sell more albums, the parental advisory is left on the back to try to avoid the beady-eye of parents ( the store did put stickers on the front of the album ). Alike most bands, the record label is displayed on the bottom left of the digipak, this sticking to the convention of the location of the record label logo. The track listing is in white writing, again to make it stand out on the black background however it isn't in as big as a font as the band’s name for the obvious reason that they'd be no space.