Roland Barthes introduced the terms Denotation, Connotation and Anchorage into Media studies; these terms help us as media students to answer the question 'what does it mean?'.
Denotation deals with what we initially see; this digipak is of a man sitting down over looking a lake, there are people walking into said lake, two statue figures and what looks like white lines drawn onto cardboard.
Connotation is another word for the mental concepts that automatically spring into our mind when we are presented with a picture. This digipak clearly connotes nature, the trees and the lake are painted in water-colour, presenting nature as very beautiful. The man on the bottom right hand side of the digipak could either be looking out at the trees and the lake connoting perhaps man's perceptions of nature or he could be observing the people being led into a lake by the statue figures, connoting a different message of humans standing by whilst others are lead misleadingly. These two connotations differ enormously; this proves that different people perceive or connote different things from the same picture.
Anchorage works to restrict the number of possible connotations; words or text are added to a picture that encourage people to take a 'preferred reading' (to draw out the connotations we want to communicate). More the often the text on the front of a digipak is the title of the album, which gives the audience an idea of what type of music, or what theme the album contains. The text attached to this particular digipak is 'Still time, stream of consciousness'; prompting the connotations of time being stopped, perhaps the man is looking over a still image, whilst his thoughts or 'stream of consciousness' are being shown through the songs in the album.
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