Cover Art Must:
- Establish the genre of music, the identity of the artists and credibility of the artist and the album itself.
- Involve striking imagery as a persuasive device to draw the targeted audience in, and strong codes and conventions in order to communicate with the audience.
Conventions of Cover Art
- Artist's name
- Album name
- Popular featured song tracks
- Artist/band
- Striking image
- Explicit sticker
- Barcode
- Prior to the 1950s album covers consisted of: landscapes, or serious images. The covers were functional rather than creative.
- During the 1950's Pop Art (-popular culture and high art) was introduced to album covers, originally by The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, with Peter Blake as the artist.
Codes Decoded:
Flowers in the foreground - hippy, spirit- peace and love, drugs, nature, beauty.
Drum - reinforces seriousness of their musicality. Circus font and styling- fun, performance, entertainment, vibrant.
Costume - Performers, striking(note colours)- juxtaposes the military jackets- undermines. New, less serious than any previous cover album. Shocking.
Facial expressions - serious. Serious about their music.
Location - includes: palm tree, blue sky - happy, free, summer of love, hope, exotic, different - new. The iconic images of other artists are below the blue sky - they appear to be on the island - all in their own league.
The band - are central and in the foreground. They are infront of a large range of the biggest iconic singers ever recorded, placing their status before theirs - trying to subtley raise the audience's opinions of their popularity and status in the music league.
Nirvana - Nevermind
Codes Decoded:
Money on a hook - society taught to set out to achieve and recieve money from a young age - the baby is following the money blindly(can't see properly under water) - suggesting that society aren't seeing things clearly.
Water - can move any direction in water, nothing in sight to stop the baby/society but the baby still swims towards the money - follwing like sheep. Corrupting baby - Nirvana corrupting us? Revealing the truth?
Baby - new album, fresh, innocence, unique, undiscovered, under-developed - like Nirvana. New.
Money+Baby - Ideological album cover - juxtaposition - innocence and corrupt American(dollar bill) society. Materialistic, money-driven, political statement- serious band, unnatural.
Font - now iconic - black, bold, underlined, capitals - all make it striking. Simple - not superficial, sophisticated, serious(about their music). Tall font - proud. Same size - equality in society.
Rage Against the Machine
Codes Decoded:
Lingustics - Rage Against" - protest. "The Machine" - society - protest against society. Rebellious. (also tried (and succeeded) to take over Simon Cowell's almost guaranteed number one spot).
Context - Man coated himself in petrol and set himself on fire in a busy American street in protest to the Vietnamise war. Died. - If pragmatics are understood - instant impact. If not, the imagery does this anyway.
Colours - black, grey and white - newspaper print - serious, shock, impact, importance, realism.
Title - bold, cut-out-paper effect - again strengthening the newspaper code.
Self-titled band - serious about these specific issues.
Band doesn't feature - breaks convention. Not interested in the personal publicity, purely that of the cause. Serious artist. Serious on musicality.
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