This Corrosion – The Sisters Of Mercy.

Digipak Analysis.Sarah Byard.

Colours

Lots of black. The Sisters Of Mercy are a ‘gothic rock’ band, and a convention of this genre is to have a lot of black.

The text is all white, which makes it stand out against the black background.

The only bit of colour is the orange on the cover.

The orange highlights the ‘stormy’ image. It also looks like fire, and everyone loves fire. It could symbolise that, although this single is a mellower one, they still have their ‘fire’..

Fonts

Quite a formal font.

Quite a Gothic, churchy/grave font.

The band wants to be taken seriously, so they use a serious font.

Quite a handwriting-y font.

This makes it look like notes the songwriter left there.

This makes the band seem more human, so people would be more likely to buy their music.

Position

Of

Text

andsize

The text is at the bottom of the album, almost like a caption to the picture. Because the line-up of SOM changed so often, they’d need to make sure the name was quite big, because their audience may not recognise the people. It also makes sure people know who’s in the line up on this single.

Looks like a poem.

This style makes it look like the songwriter left it there and, as already stated, makes the band seem more human.

Images

There are two images of the band. Images of the band is a convention of digipaks.

Patricia Morrison was brought into the band for aesthetic reasons; she contributed basically nothing musical. It makes sense for her to be on the digipak because, although she is useless music-wise, she is the “pin-up gothic girl” – it suits SOM’s target audience.

They’re wearing typical ‘gothic’ or ‘alternative’ clothing to appeal to their fanbase.

Leather jacket.

Black shirt Big black hair.

Black corset

The background is a stormy sky.

This single has been described as a ‘step away from guitar-driven rock and towards atmospheric keyboards’, so the storm is a fitting background, as storms are atmospheric.

Institution Information

‘Merciful Release’ – Andrew Eldritch’s own label – gets more space on the digipak than the other institutions.

This is because it is Andrew Eldritch’s band, so he would want his record label to have more of a mention, even though other institutions were involved.

GOODBYE.