Beck-The Information

During my search of websites to help with my dissertation research, I came across a site called Sleevage (www.sleevage.com) where they discuss interesting album covers and artworks and I came across a page on Beck's album "The Information" which has a blank grid booklet and comes with stickers so that the owner of the CD can decide on the composition and layout of the artwork. Intrigued and also a fan of Beck, I decided to purchase the album and give it a go myself. Not only have I enjoyed listening to the album, but I found the whole concept of the artwork a really great idea and after being too scared to use the stickers for a week, I decided to come home and give it a go today.

As well as being able to see what I have done, Beck's website (http://www.beckgallery.co.uk/) has other peoples submissions too and it appears each album came with a different set of stickers which makes each arrangement even more unique and provide even more possibilities, especially if people get together to decorate their albums.

Front and back of booklet











Inside of booklet

And the front and back of the CD case. I was happy with how it turned out, but there wasn't enough stickers that would make a background in my set. Good bit of fun though and shows why we should carry on buying CD's!

Same album artists, different decade...(Part 4)

The Prodigy: The Fat Of The Land contains a full colour booklet and it has a lot of pages, with artwork varying from artistic shots of the band members, shots of them preforming live, a cartoon style illustration of them and various other bits including some ants. This shows a lot of effort going into the design of the booklet and shows a high budget. The type used on the album is really cool and bold and shows that the Prodigy are an established band who can afford decent album art.

The booklet for Linkin Park: Hybrid Theory contains black and white photographs of the band and more stencil images, there is also a really cool sketch and an alternative logo which has a Japanese and Hip Hop feel to it. While the artwork is really good, the booklet is made from very rough card and only the cover is colour which shows that they still didn't have a huge budget. The disk is red with the soldier logo, band logo and all the track listings, which makes it look professional. Like I said earlier, having graphic designers in the band is a good way to have great artwork without spending all your money.

The booklet for Deftones: White Pony is a nice glossy booklet, but is in black and white (similar to the booklet for Diamond Eyes) obviously done for effect, rather than budget as the photographs of the band members are quite artistic. The booklet has an image on one page, then a black page with the song name and lyrics printed in a similar way to how it is done in the booklet for Diamond Eyes. The album doesn't come across as budget with such a nice booklet so obviously a bit of money was spent on the album, even with the use of minimalism.

The Alexisonfire album has a small fold out with the track names and lyrics (using the same font as the album) and has a small bit of artwork with a quote from one of the songs, showing that there was a very small budget for the album art, but it helps give it the punk/hardcore aesthetic.

The Rise Against booklet carries on the artwork that it has used on the cover and is made out of really nice glossy paper. The booklet is nice to look through and is nice to hold so effort has been put into the design of the booklet and the artwork itself.

As you would expect from the Motion City Soundtrack cover, the booklet is very low budget and just contains the album credits and a very small picture of the band.

So after looking at the album art from albums previous to the ones I looked at last week, in most cases the artwork has got much better, even though we are in a time where most people download the music and don't care about the artwork anymore. This is mainly due to the artists becoming more successful, but at the same time it feels that they appreciate their real fans and they know their real fans will go out and buy the CD and will look through the artwork and it means that design for music is not completely on it's way out.

Same album artists, different decade...(Part 3)

The 6 rock albums were:

The Prodigy: The Fat Of The Land
Linkin Park: Hybrid Theory
Deftones: White Pony
Alexisonfire: Alexisonfire
Rise Against: Siren Song Of The Counter Culture
Motion City Soundtrack: I Am The Movie

The Prodigy: The Fat Of The Land came out in 1997, so just a few years before 2000, but still a good example as the cover is created using digital photo manipulation. A Crab on the beach but the beach is a motion blur, so from a distance the image is quite relaxing but close up is quite an aggressive image and fits The Prodigy's image of being a electro act and a rock act at the same time.

Linkin Park: Hybrid Theory is their first album, it came out in 2000 and the artwork that appears in the booklet was designed by band members Mike Shinoda and Joe Hahn who are both Graphic Design graduates. The stencilled Linkin Park logo and Soldier give the album a punk feel and show there is angst behind the music. This is also shown by the grey background and the bold dark red of the soldier. The back to front "N"s and the use of spray paint also show a strong Hip Hop influence, which is the reason the album is called "Hybrid Theory" as their style is a hybrid of Rock and Hip Hop music.

Deftones: White Pony is their third album and it came out in 2000, the cover is literally a grey background and a small white pony stencil at the bottom. The album is still an alternative metal album but sees the band taking on the influence of other genres like new wave, which is why the album cover has an 80's feel to it. The cover is very minimalist as if the album only has a cover because it has to, but also shows a great album doesn't need a great cover as it their highest selling and most popular album.

Alexisonfire's self titled album is their first release and came out in 2004. The lettering is very similar to Linkin Park's again linking to Punk inspiration. The image of the skull within the heart is the bands logo and shows an aggressive punk sound mixed with a bit of a soft side (their genre is called "Melodic Hardcore"). The cover looks like it has been drawn in black ink and then inverted which again is a typical punk style for creating covers.

Rise Against: Siren Song Of The Counter Culture is the band's third album and was released in 2004, it is their first album released on a major record label, and compared to their previous albums has much more budget for album artwork. The cover is a screen printed red, yellow and black image of a blaring speaker with lightning bolts (to emphasise the loud noise) and behind it is a faint image of a two headed eagle. The bold colours help it stand out and make it look like a rock album and the aggressive and rough serif font also gives the album a punk rock look. The cover is nice to look at and shows album artwork at its neatest, even when the music is mainly heavy and aggressive.

Motion City Soundtrack: I am the Movie, is the bands first album and is quite a low budget cover, containing an inky illustration of a city over a picture of roses. The font is very simple and the cover doesn't look like it was designed by a great designer. The bands future albums all have much better design as we can see from My Dinosaur Life and this is just a case of becoming more popular and earning enough money to get better album artwork. In the case of some bands like Linkin Park, it helps to have band members that can design artwork on your first album, but Linkin Park were signed to a much bigger record label and there fore had a lot more of a budget than Motion City Soundtrack.

Same album artists, different decade...(Part 2)

After looking at the covers of the 6 Hip Hop albums, I then looked at the insides like I did with the recent albums, because in 2000 people would only be able to have the music in CD form (or in rare cases vinyl or cassette) so in theory there would be more effort in the art than you would get now.

Cypress Hill: Skull & Bones has 2 discs so the CD compartment folds out within the case, revealing the black and white version of the illustration. Both CD's contain images on them along with the track listing in the album font. The booklet folds out as completely black and white on one side, with all four members of the band each given their own square where they each look sinister and are covered in shadows and see through skulls. The other side of the booklet is in full colour (same side as the cover) and has the group shot of the band which is similar to the back of the CD, there is also more photographs and illustrations of skulls. The amount of artwork in the booklet and on the CD's shows a high budget and a lot of it put into the packaging.

Jay-Z: The Blueprint CD is bright blue, has the logo printed on the front and also contains a small image of Jay-Z. The booklet contains various photos of Jay-Z and money, but also contains the logo and various blue print style drawings printed on see through paper and makes the booklet stand out from the typical gangsta rap album artwork, it is also nice to flick through a booklet and get a few different textures. The back of the CD has the track listing super-imposed over an extreme close up of Jay-Z from the cover. Again this CD shows a high budget, which you would expect from Jay-Z as he is a multi millionaire and is all about image.

The album artwork for Eminem: The Marshall Mathers LP is similar to the cover, there is a lot of shots of him looking moody and aggressive, there is also some shots of him dressed like a super market worker and messing around to link to his more comical side. The photo's aren't all in black and white, there is quite a lot of colour and there is also some nice artistic photography that doesn't have Eminem in it but adds an atmosphere to the booklet. Compared to Eminem's first album the artwork is a lot more interesting and looks like it has cost a fair bit more, showing that success adds to the improvement of the album packaging.

Mos Def: Black on Both Sides has a lot of photography for the album art, which is not what you would expect from such a minimalist cover. The photography is of Mos Def and also New York City where he is from. There are various colourful shots that are a bit more ambiguous, but there is also a nice image of Mos Def looking at the New York skyline, where all the buildings are covered in shadow but the sky is bright. His name, album title, track listing and credits are printed over the top. Compared to the Jay-Z, Cypress Hill and Eminem albums, Mos Def obviously doesn't have a large budget for the packaging, but there is still a sufficient amount and it gives an insight into what the artist and the album are all about.

People Under The Stairs: Question In The Form Of An Answer has a fold out booklet, but again is not exactly high budget as they are signed to an independent record company. There are a couple of shots of them preforming live, and a shot of both members, one is looking through old records and the other is just having a break in his bedroom, which I really like because it shows they are real people and making the music to make a living and because they enjoy it, not to become superstars, so in a way the low budget art is necessary because it shows how real they are.

KRS One: The Sneak Attack has some shots of him reading with loads of books piled up, a close up of him in the middle of the book, which folds out from the middle of his face, and some blurry shots of him playing live. These images are very different to the soldier image on the front but that is because they show what the album is really about "Hip Hop knowledge" and the sneak attack is on the minds of Hip Hop listeners fooled by poor imitations in the genre. The artwork isn't really high budget, but at the same time is of good quality and shows that KRS One doesn't rely on over the top album imagery, but at the same time knows that it is an important factor of the album and provides it to help his music stand out.

Same album artists, different decade...

After looking at 14 different albums all released 2009/2010, I decided it would be a good idea to look at their counterparts from 10 years ago (or in some cases 6/7 years ago).

This meant looking at 12 albums (as blakroc is a recent group and P.O.S's first album is very hard to get hold of in CD form)

Hip Hop Albums:

Cypress Hill: Skull & Bones

Jay-Z: The Blue Print

Eminem: Marshal Mathers LP

Mos Def: Black on Both Sides

People Under The Stairs: Question In The Form Of An Answer

KRS One: The Sneak Attack

(the albums are all from 2000/2001)

Unlike their recent counterparts most of these CDs use very dull and dark colours like beige, grey, blue and black. There was no sign of red at all!

The lack of bright colour emphasizes that Hip Hop was going for a much more aggressive and darker sound 10 years ago as these are all great covers.

Cypress Hill "Skull and Bones" has a skull and cross bones on the cover and the font they have used makes it look like a banner that pirates would be carrying. Paired up with the shades of brown/beige and faded gold, it looks more like a rock album than a typical Hip Hop album, but this is typical of Cypress Hill. The main reason this album looks more Rock though is because the band split the album into two discs "Skull" which focuses on Hip Hop and "Bones" which is the band mixing their original sound with heavy thrashing guitars and drums, so the artwork shows what the album is about, even if it is re-appropriated imagery from history and another genre of music.

Jay-Z "The Blueprint" is one of his most successful albums and you can tell from the cover that Jay-Z had predicted he had made a classic. The cover shows Jay-Z in the form of a typical godfather with his entourage waiting for him, as if this is his status in Hip Hop and the music industry and his audience and all his contemporary artists are preparing for his next release. The cover is in black and white, but uses a plastic blue case to give it a blue effect which is really cool and helps the album stand out, as this was before MP3 downloads were a major threat to CD sales so the CD has to look as good as the music sounds. The font is very modern and futuristic and shows the album is from the year 2000, even though the inspiration for the imagery could date back to the 1930's.

Eminem "The Marshal Mathers LP" is Eminem's second album, it is his most successful and it has also been released with at least three different front covers, all with a similar theme but the one that I have is the only one with a close up shot and in colour (not that there is much). The cover shows that Eminem is a tortured artist as he looks tired, fed up and depressed, but the look in his eyes almost shows how confident and cocky he is despite his mental state. The minimal use of colour helps the album stand out and the focus on Eminem in his room shows that this album is about him and personal to him, it also brings his darkness and anger to life, even in such a small CD cover.

Mos Def "Black on Both Sides"is his first album and has a large close up full colour illustration of Mos Def looking calm. The black background helps centre in on his face and shows that the album is about him and his experiences and he also doesn't need any other imagery to show that the music he makes is important and is Hip Hop without gimmicks.

People Under The Stairs "Question In The Form Of An Answer" is their second album but is still low budget compared to the other covers. The cover is a simple photograph of the group watching the horizon with the sun either setting or rising. Both members are completely shadowed and it makes them look mysterious. The imagery makes the album look calm and ambiguous to what the music actually is, it is only the faint shape of a hood and a baseball cap that show these guys dress like rappers. The font looks very simple and just looks like it was typed out with a random font, unlike the designed fonts of the other covers. I think the cover is nice to look at, but is not the best piece of design and shows that a bigger budget gets you a better cover.

KRS One "The Sneak Attack" has KRS One dressed up as a soldier and leading troops, but this is just parodying the album name, as it is about leading a Sneak attack on Hip Hop music, not leading soldiers into a battle. This is similar to the design of "Survival Skills" how it is using imagery relating to the title, rather than the re-appropriation of the music. In a way this cover is similar to "The Blueprint", as KRS One is saying his status is the leader of Hip Hop music.

2009/2010 Hip Hop Album Covers (Part 3)

(Continued from Tuesday 5th October)

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.

http://lukeinsect.com/pages/project_palbum.html

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.

2009/2010 Hip Hop Album Covers (Part 2)

(Carried on from yesterdays post)

After looking at the front covers of the 8 Hip Hop albums, I decided to take a look inside and look at the booklets and the case to see if any more work is done on the presentation, as the cover image will still appear on Itunes/media player, it is the rest of the work that you would be unlikely to see.

Cypress Hill "Rise Up" has a continuation of the artwork throughout the booklet, it also has some cinematic style shots of the group and some of these images could easily have been the front cover for the album!

The back of the booklet, the CD and even behind the CD continue the artwork from the front cover.

The first two pages of the booklet look like they have been lifted from a movie poster, to give the CD a cinematic feel, and show the band want their music to be experienced, not just downloaded and shoved onto your Ipod. Rise Up is a great album and the album artwork helps to emphasise this and really makes it worth the £10 it cost. I don't think I have been disappointed with any of Cypress Hill's artwork, they really stand out in the Hip Hop world especially in 2010.

The artwork for Jay-Z "The Blueprint 3" is just various close up shots of the front image, but also has the song lyrics printed in a very nice layout. The booklet also feels nice, it is smooth and glossy which again you can't get with Itunes. I wasn't the albums biggest fan to be honest,I liked a couple of songs but I much prefer his earlier stuff, but as a graphic designer I love the front cover and the booklet and think that it is an example of music design in it's prime, even though the CD looks to be on it's way out.

Eminem "Relapse" has a full booklet and it is fairly decent, a standard album booklet really but it carries on the theme of drugs and rehab with a certificate (possibly real I'll have to look into it) next to an image of Eminem wielding a large Knife. The CD is also designed to look like the lid of a medicine bottle, and when taken out of the case you can see the pills, which I thought was quite clever and showed a lot of thought has gone into the presentation.

The cover on Mos Def "The Ecstatic" is quite an artistic photograph, and while the inside of the booklet is just some messy scribbly writing (done in the most artistic way possible) the back of the booklet is some nicely designed shapes, the CD is black with a multicoloured signature(?) on it, and behind the CD is a Warhol-esque set of four portraits of Mos Def, so you can tell he is into art, and it is again showing the album having more to it than the songs and the cover image.

"Carried Away" by People Under The Stairs actually has a lot of effort put into the artwork, considering they are an underground act and probably don't have a lot of room in their budget for album artwork. The Booklet cover (hidden by the box) has a picture of the two group members "Thes One" and "Double K" after a big party, laying asleep in the early hours surrounded by beer bottles, pizza boxes and albums, among other things. Despite the image being a jokey salute to immaturity, it is quite artistic and shows that behind the serious design of the box is still room for having fun and being artistic in a different way. The booklet then folds out into snapshots of the group meeting other rappers, preforming and messing around, then it flips round into a boardgame (it becomes about a3 size) which has typical party images but re-created with lego men and various other toys. It's an original idea and again you can't get that from Itunes! There is also a backstage pass style card which is a nice touch, showing these guys really care about their fans, and their support means a lot to them. This album has a personal feel to it and it is something your not going to get from an MP3 Download, even if you have paid

money for it.

The cover is in the bottom right corner, the "backstage pass" is next to the CD.

And here's the board game.

KRS One and Buckshot's album "Survival Skills" has several images in a similar style to the front cover, the two of them overcoming dangers of the wilderness, which is really cool and quite funny too, my favourite is of Buckshot catching a fish with a stick. The images look like a cross between photography and paintings so they have obviously been created on photoshop, very clever and brilliant none the less. The CD also has the front cover in silhouette form which I like.

Blakroc is in a cardboard fold out case, and the inside is black and white photos of the various people that put the album together, as well as the CD itself but there is no continuation of the artwork which is a shame but I guess helps give it that 70's feel.

And finally (from the Hip Hop section and for this post anyway) is P.O.S "Never Better"

like I explained in the previous post the album booklet folds out into 16 different pictures and then has 5 acetate images to fit over the top of some of the images to create new images which is really interesting and fun too. The case is really interesting too as it is made out of acetate and the back of it just uses the CMYK colours (which are also used in the fold out images too.)