CDD Research : The History Of The Album Cover
In the early 1920's retailers started gathering many of these cardboard sleeves and binding them together with heavy paperboard or leather covers. These looked similar to large photo albums and, borrowing the name, were sold as record albums. These albums offered much greater protection for the discs than the original packaging and were seen as indispensible to disc owners that had seen too many of their fragile records broken.
Beginning in the 1930s the record companies started using these record albums to distribute bundles of records from one performer or a collection of performers with similar musical styles. Some of the first cover designs can be traced to these albums and the record company’s desire to graphically communicate the music each album held.
Alex Steinweiss the art director for Columbia Records is given credit for the concept of modern cover art. He experimented with different concepts and images through the late 1930s and into the early 1940s. During this time Columbia Records rebounded from the terrible years they had suffered during the depression to become one of the most prominent record companies in the United States. Much of this was due to their ground breaking use of graphical design. By the close of the decade all major recording companies had graphic design professionals on staff.
The golden era of cover art design began in the early to mid 1960s and lasted into the early 1980s. During this time the major format for music was the 12 inch, long play disc or LP. Cover art became a part of the musical culture of the time. Often used to express graphically the musician’s artistic intent, it helped connect and communicate to listeners the message or underlying theme of the album.
Designers, photographers, and illustrators sometimes became famous for their cover art creations. Such notables as Andy Warhol and Frank Frazetta were taken from being known in their industry to becoming household names due to their cover art graphic design work. So respected and desired are the designs and illustrations found in cover art that there are numerous art galleries that specialize in helping collectors find rare album covers.
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As the medium for recording transitioned from the LP to the compact disc many graphic designers failed to transition with it. Having worked for so long with the much larger canvas of the LP cover, switching to the smaller CD case left most designers dissatisfied with their results. Often artist and record companies simply tried to shrink the LP size art to fit the CD.
Album cover art, now almost exclusively CD and CD packaging artwork, went through a period of change and rebirth in the 1990s. Designers learned to capture snapshots and portions of the artist’s musical intent rather than trying to convey the entire message. Also designers started conveying the emotion of the music rather than the musical intent.
In the late 90s computer design programs started to overcome the physical limitations of the smaller CD packaging. With the ability to draw much tighter, finer lines and have even small details look crisp and sharp, once again designers were free to explore a larger variety of design options. As the technology continued to improve graphic designers adapted and were once again producing world class artwork.
In the present, CD design is undergoing a true renaissance. Rather than becoming obsolete in the digital age as many thought it would, graphic design is once again proving itself as the difference maker. The internet is now the largest record store imaginable. Now rather than browsing a few hundred albums or songs at a time you may be exposed to thousands and thousands. Since it would be impossible to listen to portions of all those thousands of songs the design of the accompanying artwork must cause potential listeners to stop and take notice and give this album a try.
CLICK HERE to watch a video which provides an interesting take on the implications of album artwork in relation to marketing.
CDD Research - Analysing Conventions Of Existing Media Products
Identifying Conventions Of CD Covers
The task we had to complete is to look at six CD cases and write down what we felt were common conventions. The notes can be seen below. This was a very important task because when it comes to making our own CD Digipack we will know what sort of things are expected and whereabouts on the Digipack.
During this task we looked at 6 album covers from different genres to see if we could identify all the similarities and differences between them. From the notes above we could see that no matter what genre of music the band makes they almost always have a picture of the artist/band on the front as well as the name of the album. A convention we found that all of the covers followed was an image on the front. None of them were left blank. However, a band that didn't follow the convention of having a picture of the band on the front cover was Pink Floyd with their album 'The Dark Side of the Moon'. They felt like they didn't need to promote the bands image because of their immense popularity at the time so there was already a lot of hype around the upcoming album. The album cover can be seen below.
Research Into Existing Music Videos
Almost all album covers can explain in great detail what music the artist makes and what the album is about. There are plenty of codes and conventions that the album artist follows to get the message across. In this task I will look at a number of albums covers and analyse the different things we would expect to find and guess the genre of the music.
The first one is 'JP Harris and the Tough Choices' with the album 'I'll Keep Calling'. The album cover is below.
Firstly, the front cover (top right) shows a trucker. We can tell he is an American trucker because of the stereotypical beard, plaid shirt, tattoos and big beard. From that I can guess that the genre of music is American folk music. Another thing that I would expect to find on the front cover is the name of the band/artist and the name of the album. This CD digipack includes both of those.
On the back (top left) we can see that the colours are being kept the same and the same phone that appears on the front appears again. There is a track list that has appropriate colours that stand out on the light brown background. Again the name of the band and album makes another appearance. The logo for the record label is just above the barcode and includes information about them.
On the inside front (bottom left) there is more information about the record label which is a formality to the record label gets some recognition from the fans who buy the album. There is also information about the band, what instrument they play and their nicknames etc. This can make the fans feel closer to the band which can actually increase their fanbase.
On the inside back (bottom right) there is an email address, telephone number and website details so fans can contact the band to offer feedback and fan mail. There are also pictures of trucks which links to the album front cover.
Another album cover that I believe follows the codes of a album cover is N.W.A'S straight outta compton. This iconic album uses all the codes related to album covers: artist name, title of the album and a image.
The font of N.W.A is in a large scratched font. This could symbolise their relations to the streets as kids of this time would often scratch their name into their street sign, as a sign of it being their street. This then can be transferred into the basic industry as they could be saying they own the music industry. N.W.A is also written in bright red. This would have been used to show danger as the colour red has connotations of danger and related subjects. The size of the font swell is very large. This would have been used as it will become the audience sees first so they displayed the most important information to help sell the cd.
The image displayed on N.W.A's straight outta compton, is an image of all members of the group looking down on the camera that is positioned as a low shot. This could symbolise their power over the audience as high is power. This would have been used to intimidate the audience an to show their position in the music industry. this combined with the text allows them to portray the type of music they make as a group.
CD Digipack Practise
In my own time I have been practising different techniques on CD Digipacks for existing artists so when it comes to making my own I will know what looks good with different genres of music.
A few of examples are below.
Construction
Once I had a fair idea of what I wanted each panel of my CD Digipack to look like I began making each panel separately. I started with the front cover.
Front Cover
I started by placing the background image down. This is the same image as what is on my music magazine advertisement, I think this is important because each of the products are all promoting eachother so it is important that they link.
The next thing I did was add the album title and the name of the artist in bold letters. It is important that this stands out because the artist is selling his name and image as well as the music so it is important that everything on the front cover stands out.
Back Cover
Firstly I imported the same image because I needed to use the background behind the artist. I did this by using the clone stamp tool. Afterwards it looked like this:
To hide the mistakes that I made when removing the artists had to be covered up by blurring the image. To do this I selected 'Gaussian Blur' and set the amount to 5.
The finished back cover looked like this:
Inside Right
I took another picture of D-Rey and used that for my inside right cover. This didn't necessarily need to match the rest as it is only the inside covers. However I still thought it was important to include the artist.
Inside Left
To make sure that at least the two inside covers matched I used the gradient tool to make the backgrounds look very similar. It looked like this.
Finished Product
