Album Covers Research

I researched a variety of album covers stretching across several decades and from doing this I was able to pick out the key features and conventions of the album cover’s composition. These features are: 

1. Album title
2. Artist name
3. Record label logo
4. Image of artist
5. Track list
6. Bar code
7. Website details of artist (for more recent albums)

Album covers can be categorised in other ways than generically. I have discovered that you could categorise them through decade of release, record label (i.e. whether the artist is part of capital rich or independent label), the artist themselves (their own house brand as it were) in the case where there may be several albums by a single artist and the artist’s fanbase.

From my research I think it’s clear that the album cover is designed to stand out on the shelf or in an online store with their target audiences, particularly the hardcore fanbases at the forefront of the designs. Often the independent artists and older album’s (dating back to vinyl) will include detailed illustrations and often the case with more dark music with heavy themes will have fairly dark colour schemes in order to create a dreary and gloomy vibe.

For an artist’s debut album, there are particular features which are emphasised to promote the artist’s overall brand image and so they immediately become recognisable in the eyes of the public to attract new audiences. Conventionally the artist’s name and an image of the artist with a very specific and thought out appearance (facial expressions, dress codes etc) will dominate the cover.