Research - Album Covers

For our band, we need to make an album cover. This needs to be:

The front cover.
The back cover.
The information panel.

The idea we have is to not be too fancy. For example, Arctic Monkeys' best selling album, Whatever People Say, That's What I'm Not, has just a man sat in front of a curtain smoking, and the Arctic Monkeys' logo in the top left.

This album cover is effective and simple, and we could easily recreate a simple cover like this.

Other covers, such as Appeal To Reason by Rise Against, use intricate designs and, although they look brilliant, they aren't something we could easily do for our cover. However, the back of the album of Appeal To Reason could have some elements that possibly could be used for our cover back.

For our band logo, we are planning on having something simple again, because of our chosen genre. Pop punk generally have noticeable logos, such as Blink 182, and the album covers are also usually simple, comprising of a single shot or the band logo. 

I think that album covers become more intricate and have a better design when the band become mainstream. For example, Blink 182's first album Cheshire Cat was a simple photograph, and their most recent, Mainstream album Neighborhoods, has a very detailed design of a skyline.

This change of intricacy happens with nearly every band. Our band's album cover, as it will be our first, will obviously be simpler than the rest of the albums that, in real life, our band could produce.

So, planning for album covers:

A simple photograph.
The band's logo.
A mixture of both.
Simple and effective.


I think that we can create a very good album cover using simple elements.


---- Jamie.