With my 8 Hip Hop albums covered, now it's time to take a look at my rock covers.
The Prodigy: Invaders Must Die
Linkin Park : A Thousand Suns
Deftones: Diamond Eyes
Alexisonfire: Old Crows/ Young Cardinals
Rise Against: Appeal To Reason
Motion City Soundtrack: My Dinosaur Life
I laid them out in a similar way to how I laid out the Hip Hop albums, Rock albums generally don't have the album artist on the front cover and are more commonly more artistic in terms of design. None of these covers have the artist on the front, but the Deftones and Prodigy albums contain an image of the group somewhere in the album. I like the design in all of the albums, there is illustration, photography, Screen Printing and digital art used.
The Prodigy "Invaders Must Die" has a black and white photograph of a blimp being boarded, which is slightly strange as the term "invaders" sounds like it is a science fiction/spaceship reference. The blimp looks like a reference to the first Led Zeppelin cover, but the use of the jagged graffiti style fonts give the cover a very modern look, especially with the album name in bright orange and the small amount of orange on what would be a black and white photo.
The design theme carries on in the rest of the booklet, with black and white images of control towers, gritty brick walls and photographs of the band, all overlaid with a slight hint of orange, either in regular shapes, lightning bolts or in loud writing similar to the "Invaders Must Die" font.
The photography is very powerful, and the slight hint of the colour used provides a contrast and also gives it a dystopian feel rather than a historic feel (which I feel black and white photography gives.
Linkin Park "A Thousand Suns" has quite an ambiguous front cover, it looks like an eclipse, but the shape of the white image also looks like a blurred bird. My version is a special edition with a DVD so there is a bit more artwork to it, also the cover of the regular version is inverted colours of the version I have. The whole CD package is made out of that really shiny glossy paper that reflects the light into rainbows. The rainbow effect combined with the ambiguous "eclipse" image looks really interesting and I was amazed when I pulled it out of the envelope (I ordered it from play.com)
When you open the case it has the CD in one compartment, a place for the booklet in the middle and the DVD documentary in another compartment. There is artwork printed on the whole spread and the booklet has 20 pages of really cool artwork, made for each track (even the ones that are under a minute in length) This is a serious amount of artwork for a CD and Linkin Park rarely disappoint in this department, mostly because 2 of the members studied graphic design, it was their first album (Hybrid Theory, 2000) that inspired me to get into graphic design when I was a teenager. So 2010, a year where people are less likely to buy the album in CD form and Linkin Park have produced something that is an amazing piece of graphic design surrounding the CD proving their may still be a future for design for music, maybe the CD will become a limited product but the music will remain as MP3 downloads.
The opened case for "A Thousand Suns" and the booklet above it.
An example of a spread from the booklet and the CD case folded over to see the inside case image, yes there is artwork everywhere on this album.
Deftones "Diamond Eyes" has a photograph of an owl on a black background, which creates a balance between serene and peaceful but also slightly haunting, which is what Deftones try and create in their music. The text is placed over the top and looks neat and modern but also gives off quite a powerful look which suits the music and also contrasts with the cover. The booklet is very minimalist in design, each track has it's own page which has the song name written in the same font as the album and underneath is the song lyrics, white text on a black background. Only a small portion of the page is taken up and the rest is blank, there are no images in the booklet until the end where we have another similar shot of the owl. Being more interested in images this album artwork isn't exactly my favourite, but there is a great use of typography and use of space which shows a lot of thought has gone into the design and this is something again Itunes would not provide. The use of black and white also gives it a similar feel to the front cover of "A Thousand Suns".
Alexisonfire "Old Crows/Young Cardinals" has a bit more colour than the 3 previous albums, but similar to Deftones, has a bird on the cover but a Cardinal. The Cardinal on a branch looks quite calm and tranquil, but the loud red colour of it and the way it's feathers shape it's head like a mohawk suggest this is still a punk rock album. The typewriter style font used on the cover is also typical punk iconography. Behind the CD is a black and white illustration of a crow, which apart from the lack of colour and the direction that the crow is facing, is very similar to the front cover. Instead of a booklet, there is a large fold out poster which is a collage of newspaper clippings and dark imagery like syringes and skulls which again is typical punk and again shows effort into the design of the CD. The red CD with the crow silhouette is also a nice touch.
The cover for Rise Against "Appeal To Reason" is similar in style to the Alexisonfire collage, this is because Rise Against are also a punk rock band, the main difference is the colour though, the bright yellow with hints of orange and red help the black silhouettes stand out and become more significant. The main images are of a business man wearing a gas mask and saluting and a baby with a cord leading to a plug. The other images are things like guns, barbed wire and cross-hairs and all these images are to show the corruption and danger in society which is what punk is all about.
The album case is made out of card so it folds out to contain a continuation of the artwork and the booklet is fixed to the case which is quite interesting and almost makes the case a continuation of the booklet. The booklet contains more black images over yellows and reds, there is also a small distorted photograph of the band inside too as well as all of the songs printed in a punk style typewritten font. The CD has the bands initials printed and looks similar to the album artwork too and on the back of the case is a silhouette of the band members as well as the track listing. The bands don't seem to appear much in album artwork, it's as if they feel their music and artwork is more important than what they look like, so with a lot of rock albums you get some really well designed well packaged CDs but would need to watch their music videos or go and see them live to see what they look like.
the booklet and the case
The CD resting on the booklet and the back cover
The artwork for Motion City Soundtrack "My Dinosaur Life" is all based around the panicked cartoon dinosaur on the cover, which has a sweet but also menacing look to it. The booklet contains an illustration for each track, for example the song "Skin and Bones" has an illustration of the skeleton of the dinosaur and "Her words destroyed my planet" has the dinosaur standing on the planet with missiles attacking it. It is the most cartoony and colourful album art I have ever seen especially on a rock album but it suits the album, it shows that there is an edge to the music but it also has a softer and light hearted element to it. The fact there is a full colour booklet illustrating each track also proves that album art is still important to Motion City Soundtrack, no matter how popular the MP3 has become.
Some examples of the art. The background to each image links to the next.
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