Album Covers

Album covers essentially give preview of an artist to a consumer.  This decides whether or not the consumer will pick it up and take it to the check out or not.

So how do we make sure they do? 

First of all, the artwork needs to communicate the genre of music, appeal to the target audience (male or female? age? social class?) and look nice!

Here's a link to the Music Radar voted 50 best album covers of all time:

http://www.musicradar.com/news/guitars/the-50-greatest-album-covers-of-all-time-444093/14

We wanted to create a graphically designed album cover, as we felt that a photo of the band would take up shooting time and not be eye-catching enough.  When people see a picture of a band on a CD, they know it's an album, however when they see an interesting graphic they may be more curious. Additionally, the indie genre album cover is characterised by graphic designs. Below are some of the album covers that have inspired me in our process of design:

1. Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures

The simple graphic given a rustic feel and in the colour scheme of our band really inspired our group with the possibilities of graphic design for our album cover.  

 

2. The 1975 - (Debut album out soon)

 

Another black and white album cover, as The 1975 are a black and white band.  This shot looks like our music video will, with tube lighting and a dark background.  The intriguing way in which the band name is written makes the audience want to know more, perfect as this is their debut album (and ours too of course!)

3. Vampire Weekend - Contra

I like the idea of taking an archived photo and putting modern text over it.  The photo of the girl speaks to our song choice and makes the album more appealing to a male audience, and the vintage feel would definitely appeal to our "stuck in the past" but "in with the technology" indie target audiences. 

4. Sparkadia - Postcards

Using things that are square shaped as album covers works very well, as people love seeing things that are being used as other objects, "WOW! It's a phone...BUT IT'S ALSO A BURGER!"  The earthy tone colour scheme is a device of the indie rock genre, and adding some colour to the promotional package would show that THE DMND has a lot more to offer than just being black and white all the time.

5. Depeche Mode - New Life

Based on Salvador Dali's 'Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man', this album cover has more of a background and symbolic value.  Using well-known artwork to create meaningful album covers not only insinuate what the album/artist is about, but connects with the audience as when people pick up on subtleties or recognise something, they are immediately drawn into it.