Album Covers

I have been looking at some very creative album covers from some of the music I listen to. Please take a look below. I have found a very cool website that gives a description of the creativity behind each album cover. have taken some information shown below from there. The URL is http://sleevage.com/. other sources of information are referenced under each album cover.

Daft Punk’s albums have one thing in common. They all utilise the bands logo as the main graphic. You’d think this would get boring after a while but it’s a smart move as all the albums are easily recognisable and have a nice twist on the logo. The creativity is in re interpreting the logo each time. This one has the sublty that at first glance is not noticed. It feels like underneath there is a wild disco going on inside and everyones invited. http://sleevage.com/daft-punk-discovery/

Seminal British band The Stone Roses released their self titled debut album in 1989. The cover features artwork by band member John Squire, who was largely responsible for the band’s visual identity.As with most Stone Roses releases, the cover displays a work by John Squire. It is a Jackson Pollock-influenced piece titled "Bye Bye Badman," which makes reference to the May 1968 riots in Paris.

The cover was named by Q magazine as one of "The 100 Best Covers of All Time." In the accompanying article, Squire said: "Ian [Brown] had met this French man when he was hitching around Europe, this bloke had been in the riots, and he told Ian how lemons had been used as an antidote to tear gas. Then there was the documentary—-a great shot at the start of a guy throwing stones at the police. I really liked his attitude." This story was also the inspiration for the lyrics to the song of the same name.^[3] The background of the piece is based on the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland. The band visited the causeway while playing a gig at the University of Ulster in Coleraine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stone_Roses_(album

The Chemical Brothers

For Me there is one band that comes to mind. They're album and singles covers have a very simple yet effective, and a very brilliant visual impact. This is the chemical brothers. Please see below. All information was taken directly from http://sleevage.com/the-chemical-brothers-push-the-button/.

I’ve always liked both The Chemical Brothers music and their artwork. Push The Button is no exception. I was about to talk about their latest (and pretty damn good) album ‘We Are the Night’ but thought I’d wait to see if any more singles are released before delving into that one.

What I didn’t realize before starting research on Push the Button was there were so much artwork created for it. There’s three singles, each with a second disc and a colour variation, a live album, ITV and even two fan based bootleg remix albums! All kept in the same iconic styling and each supporting the iconic look of the album cover. And that’s not even counting press ads, posters, flyers.

The style of artwork reminds me of Soviet propaganda posters of the post WW1 era. Their limited colour palette and stark imagery stands out in a CD rack of over produced imagery.

Each singles artwork has a theme and is carried across both covers. The second cover was created the UK release where two discs were released. The rest of the world received just the single disc.

Galvanize was the first single and is themed “Construction” or maybe “Destruction” depending on how you read the artwork.

Each single also had a alternate coloured cover. These were used to denote the 1-2 track promo copies of the album. Usually sent to press.

And the UK 2nd disc cover. This UK version is one one of my fav from the series.

Believe came next and again the theme can be read differently. The megaphone prompts me to think of protests and the spreading of information while the siren’s provoke images of warnings and dictatorship. (Deep I know!)

The coloured promo version.

And the UK 2nd disc.

The last single was The Boxer. The international disc seems like a celebration or political rally while the 2nd UK disc feels like a political rally going back to my statement that the artwork could have been inspired by Soviet propaganda posters.
You could also say it looks like the Myspace logo guys protesting about how crap their site is.

The alternate colour here is a punchy orange.

The UK 2nd disc definitely feels more political and was the only cover to use a script font rather than the bold, block text on all the others.

Artwork for the download only Live05 album also continued the art direction of the album.

The artwork was even adapted for an interactive TV promotion.

A collective of DJ’s produced a remix album as a bootleg called “Flip the Switch”which recreated the artwork perfectly. They did this for the main album seen below.

And the Believe EP.