Friday 11 September 2009

RESEARCH - Research for the CD Album Cover

Looking at existing CD Covers

As we chose to make an album cover as part of the songs release along side our music video we have decided that we should do some research into existing covers of the soft rock/pop genre as we have chosen as this genre of song. In order to make a CD cover that will effectively promote the song and video we are looking at what techniques are used in order to market the artist and their song best.





A lot of CD covers that I have looked at by established artists often include a continuous font across their range of singles or albums that they produce. This could be because it makes the artist more recognizable immediately. I have included a picture of the back of the album as we are also going to make this. both the back and front match as the black and white is continuous, so it gives the same mood. Also the use of black and white is related to emotion. The album artwork does reflect the songs on it as the images are quite emotion evoking due to the expressions of the faces on the covers. They are also very reminiscent of the video's as both of these video's have black and white parts in them so they relate.








I found that some CD artwork relates to the song title. For example this song by Florence and the Machine (which is the band of which we took our song) the album is named "Lungs" and this cover is taking the name of the song literally and translating it onto the cover. The font used to write the bands name has also been used on their album cover. This is useful to us as we would consider using the font on our CD single cover due to it being related to the band. The album cover also uses literal elements, due to the album being named 'Lungs' it also features lungs. These album covers are very colorful which does attract attention. The back of the album also keeps to the same themes as it has lungs on it also. Typical qualities of the backs of albums are often simple and just have track listings and an image on them.








I have also found that animated CD covers are quite effective and are used. This is quite different to other CD artwork I have seen but this could be beneficial due to the fact that it stands out as it is like no others. These are both singles from the singer Kate Nash which also use the same font on both singles to show consistency. Also her album 'Made of Bricks' contains an animated element and looks like it has been put together with editing software on a computer and also the picture of the house relates to the album title rreferring to the bricks. As I own this album I have also noticed that usually the album artwork fits with the songs on the album, for example the songs on her album are quite fun which fits with the album cover, which also fits with the Beyonce cover as many of the songs are sad and slow songs which fits with the somber tone of the black and white cover.





Here is another that i have looked at. This album cover by the artist Lily Allen is also very edited like many others are. I found found that the album covers often do feature the artist which is usually quite common. This album cover is very animated and contains very fun elements to it. by looking at this album cover you could probably tell that this album is going to be a quite upbeat one. Even the fonts of the name and title of the album seem very fun. As I own this album I know that some of the pictures on the front relate to the songs for example the police helmet and the bike are mentioned in one of the songs. This album cover is very effective when creating a mood.








Another album cover that I looked at is 'Spirit' by Leona Lewis. As this is a close-up of the artists face it can be seen as quite an emotional front cover. This is quite typical of this sort of music as it reflects what music is on the album. This is quite a simple album cover as it does not use animations just a simple picture of the artist which helps market the artist more as it helps them because more familiarized. Her facial expression I believe is the key aspect of this album cover as it helps portray emotions.







Another album cover I looked at is 'Riot' by Paramore. This album cover does not feature the artist. It stands out quite a lot as it's a very different album cover to others that are usually seen. The use of the color orange makes the album title stand out. It can be seen that this album cover reflects the music as the genre of music is rock and it's quite fast paces music so suits the music rather than having the artist on the front cover like on Leona Lewis's album.









This is an album I looked at by the artist 'Taylor Swift'. As the album is "soft pop" music, the album cover fits this very well as it shows a very feminine, soft cover that fits the mood of the music on the album. The picture is very simply just of her looking nice and the facial expression shows emotion. The font is also very soft and matches the picture. The back of this album is consistent with the front as it album has a similar font as was on the font


This is the album cover for "Three Words" by Cheryl Cole. As the album is quite emotional the use of a black and white image is a good choice. In this picture she looks very feminine due to the flowers and make-up which reflects stereotypical representations of women. The font of the title is a good choice as it fits with the image as it's a soft font. The back of the album fits well with the front as it also uses black and white. The simplicity works really well as the message is clear, and the genre of the album is established very well just by looking at the cover and image.




This album "19" by Adele is also a very simple album cover. The lighting is very effective in this. The front and the back of this album work very well together as the theme is continuous, and simple which works very well as the genre is established very quickly.










Throughout this research I did find that the album covers often are a reflection of the music that they contain. For example Leona Lewis's album 'Spirit' is mostly soft love songs which she is known for. The album cover is a close up of her face and is quite emotional. Also Beyonce's album "I Am Sasha Fierce" is mostly containing soulful love songs and the black and white front cover evokes the emotions of the songs. Usually the genres with are slow and love song type genres, the covers are usually very simple as it's easy to evoke emotions with just one striking image. However, both Kate Nash and Lily Allen's albums both have quite fun/Colorful animated front covers, with more going on in them, which reflects that the songs on the albums are very upbeat pop sounding tracks. My group will take all this into account and as the song we have chosen is quote an emotional love song we will make sure the front cover of our album reflects this and maybe use a quite emotion evoking images. The backs of the albums are very consistent with the front as they are usually using the same colour schemes as the font so they fit together well. All of the back of albums I've seen have had the track listing for the album, and so we are going to follow this convention. As for the inside cover, these are always usually consistent with the front, usually displaying a photo related to the band/a photo of the band, so we will comply with this also.





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