<Blue> is the fourth album of legendary Canadian folk singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell released at 1971, and has always been reviewed as one of her most successful and personal album ever. <Blue> has received both critical and commercial success, reaching 15th place on the billboard 200 and 3rd place in the UK albums chart, and New York Times magazine has chosen <Blue> as one of the 25 albums that represented "turning points and pinnacles in 20th-century popular music". The digipak of album <Blue> has a very significant design that suits the name of the album very much.
The front cover of the album <Blue> has provided me a strong and artistic impression, it features a very contrast portrait of the singer that covered in colour blue, and the name of the album and the singer be printed in the up-right corner of the cover in a bright colour which is very obvious for audience to memorize the name of the artist. The whole cover's visual style fits the name of the album perfectly, also the several emotions that could be suggested by colour blue such as harmony, peace and lonely fits the atmosphere that these songs within the album created as well, which is a melancholy atmosphere. Also the facial expression of the portrait on the front cover expresses a sense of loneliness and sadness just as well as the visual style, according to Joni Mitchell herself, this album were inspired by the tough breakup between she and her long time boyfriend Graham Nash and a long vacation she set off around europe, therefore the two main emotions of this album is sadness and loneliness which this front cover has both expressed perfectly.
The photograph of the album <Blue> is definitely a masterpiece, it not only contained so much connotations within a single photograph but also fits the genre conventions of folk music and the "Star Image" of the singer Joni Mitchell as well. For instance the guitar she's holding in front of her suggests the genre conventions of folk music, and also the whole nostalgic and vintage visual style of the front cover has followed the genre conventions as well. The juxtaposition between light and dark on singer's face is amazing, and the visual effect that caused by it has totally fits the "Star Image" of Joni Mitchell which is very artistic and a bit petite-bourgeoisie.
The disc design of the album <Blue> is quite simple, a yellow coloured disc contained the record label logo of Reprise Records and the chronological listing of songs. The colour choice of the disc is very thoughtful and unique, due to the reason that colour yellow is the inverse colour of blue, therefore it could provides the audience an effective visual impression, but the rest of the album is rather simple therefore follows the genre conventions of folk music which is simple, also the vintage feeling that the disc design provided me is also follows the genre conventions of folk music as well.
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Overall, the digipak design of the album <Blue> is simple yet elegant and meaningful, it has expressed the personality and identity of the singer and followed the genre conventions of folk music at same time.