Sum 41 - Underclass Hero

This is the CD cover / digi pack for Sum 41's Underclass Hero, which is a more recent album (around 2008-2010). Sum 41 are indeed an alternative rock band, but they're (sometimes) also leaning towards a punk sort of style (I guess like Cake, the band can domain within that typical genre but lean towards a ''mini appeal''); nonetheless it's alternative rock. How can we tell? The genre is pretty easy to identify through CD/digi pack, the package uses a stark contrast of white to grey (occasionally black, as ranging through the colours tones) is pretty much the same as the stark alternative contrast of black and white.
The CD cover itself is extreamly dark yet flamboyint - it has splashes of pink (a very fenimin though attractive lust of colour in the dark tones) to create not only that contrast, but that eye catching appeal too. Typically the CD screams alternative rock, if only in a slightly darker tone; the photography on the front is almost abstract which is typically conventional of the genre, more so its of a band member - establishing iconography - to scream to their audience 'we're Sum 41 here!' though it's got the visual conventions of alternative rock (colour contrasts, use of colour, colour tone, illustration, photography, a sense of isolation and even drugs) to draw in those fan membes of the alternative rock audience. In a hypothetical sense (although any person who's into alternative rock would have heard them) that a guy who likes alternative rock has never heard of Sum 41, they walk into a store and see this out of place somewhere away from the normal set up of genre's, they'll know it belongs to alternative rock because of its appealing visuals, its themes of isolation, drug use and stark colour choice / contrast that it has that rock sorta sense about it.

The actual CD itself continues those conventions over, if only a little more eye popping when you open the case - the bright pink with black/white/grey drawings on them, atorns the eye in such away that you're almost instructed to pop the CD out and listen to it; it's like a little piece of art in contrast to everything else.

So, the digi pack. In terms of creativity (and what we're thinking of doing on a similar level) is a really good piece. Yes, it screams alternative rock, but it's also a little bit different. Sure, it's got those conventional alternative rock genre colours running through, but it's also the style of font and text orientation that's pretty cool, and in some ways, distorted to represent the music it beholds. If you were to open this up, you'd get an immediate sense that this digi pack belongs to an alterantive rock CD because it's so unique. The font is pretty cool, the scrattcy-kind-of doodles it has to it scream alternative rock and incooperates that theme of 'rebelion' that's found within lyrics, videos etc.
The text orientation is an interesting one; so far, from what I've looked at, in a digi pack the text is pretty much straight forward, you can read it off the page by flipping between them, but when you open this up you have to turn it each and every which way to read the lyrics, which is interesting because I guess it makes the audience interact with the pack more and think of what they're reading / doing more. Again (though going out on a limb here) I'd say that the text orentation is symbolic of the rebellious and isolated themes that are found within this genre of music - something of which can be found in the audience type e.g. teenagers. On that note, I guess it's important to note themes; whilst they're pretty conventional and found easily within the genre of music, in the same sense, I haven't really looked at any album covers / digi packs that quite do this as Sum 41 do - yet they obviously have a link with their audience through lyrics and video as much as any other alternative rock band. In some ways, the conventionaly selling point, the eye catching point to the genre/audience of this genre is the unique and individualism that comes from each band, hardly any are a like, and they please all of their fans in different ways. Sum 41 do it because they really nail down those themes of isolation and often enough drugs, whilst Linkin Park strive towards rebelliation and again isolation, 30 Seconds to Mars look at a range of everything as they tie up little knots of different themes together to produce something positive e.g. rebellion, isolation, freedom and revolution - whilst Cake really look at why the world's wrong through their funky style of isolation and Jimmy Eat World do a little bit of everything because they target the teenage audience of this genre (which is, in reality, most of this genre audience) through the isolation, drugs, parties, revolution, rebelliation, they look at all of them and they seem to hit it off with their audience because they look, they identify with lots of different people. When all of this is incooperated into their videos and albums, there is sense that they can target their audiences as though through personal methods of already contacting them before; all they have to do is put out of the conventions of obvious visuals, for albums and digi packs, photography, art, illustration, colour coordination and the genreal over-all look and appeal of the piece.

On that note, Sum 41 do it really well here - they identify their themes. Isolation is an interesting one because they stractch out peoples faces and block out their eyes (albeit, insanely creepy, though in some respect, relationable) whilst they look at drugs (alchol) and even images of goverment to symbolse that rebelious tone to it. What's more interesting is that they do it through illustrative visuals (or photoshopped/distorted/abstract images) to get their point across or to relate (in some ways, just as the video will do) with the connotations of the actual lyrics of the songs themselves, bringing forth that fantasy element of the whole thing.
That rebelious theme continues though, the pictures of 'mom' and 'dad' in here (in 50-60's style) firstly show cases how teenages of their target audience may have with their perental relationships, it's all about isolation and rebellation, so parents is pretty much where it starts. Though what else is kind of interesting also is the style of the images, like I said, 60's kind of feel which would be the time in which rock'n'roll came into swing and founded a huge sense of rebelation in terms of the music produced, the change in culture and the actual meaning of music sometimes. In some ways, that's what Sum 41 are doing right here, right now.
They're just finding it increadiably easy to sell it to their audiences because of what it is; it does what it says on the label effectively because of the conventions it show cases, it's obvious that it's alternative rock and it is. Again, the visual images, the illustration, the photoraphy, the contrasts in colour and that flare of pink really tie together nicely to pick up on those conventions of the genre.