Album covers research

The covers of albums and digipacks are the most immediate form of advertising that the band/artist has. It catches the buyers eye and makes them want to look closer and buy the disc. Some are simplistic. American industrial rock act Nine Inch Nails often use simplistic images for thier album covers.

Some bands, however, use images of themselves on thier album covers and present themselves in a way that matches the mood of the band style or album/song style.



The Front of the Green Day cover shows the band in black and white. This connotes the depressing lyrics and music throughout. The back also features Green, to make you think of the band.

 

 

Most album covers grab the audience using iconic, controvesial, shocking and memorable images. The idea of the album art is to make you remember it.

 

 One of the most famous album covers ever is the front cover for Nevermind by Nirvana, which features a naked baby swimming towards a dollar bill on a fishing line. The cover is about politics and greed (showing how money is something everyone will want/ use money as bait for people/ people can be bought ect) and at the same time, the idea of a naked baby caused some people to find the cover controvesial



 

 

 

Although The Simpsons seemed to like it

 

 

The cover for Green Day's American Idiot album stands out and sticks in your head because of the minimal colour. It uses only 3 bold colours (black, white and red) to make it eyecatching. During the albums production and tours, the lead singer would be mainly just in these three colours (usually all black, with a white or red tie) and the albums bold image of a heart shaped granade connotes the concept album's fictional love story interwoven the political lyrics in the album.