Album Covers Research

1) What are the typical features an album cover has? Make a list of all the elements they have in common
- eye catching imagery
- something unseen before with wow factor
- cool artwork
- if the band is new, their cover generally has images of them on the front to build up an artist identity
- name of artist
- name of album
BACK COVER
- track listing
-smaller filler artwork or images
- barcode
- institutional information

2) How would you catagorise the covers in front of you? are there any ways of distinguising between then other than generically?
With the more indie bands their album covers generally feature some cool or quirky imagery, giving them more of an eyecatching wow factor, as these sorts of bands generally focus more on the music than on the image of themselves, as well as this they also mimick the mood/ tone of the music in terms of colour or vibrancy. With the more poppy mainstream, single arists such as adele or britney spears, they feature images of themselves, to help build up an aritst identity or in britney spears's case, use the sex appeal of herself to sell her music. Debut albums usually have alot more thought put into them as they need to attract a new audience and build up the image the artist wants to portray, whilst almost showing the genre of the music as well, these generally have something quite eyecatching on them, such as sexualised imagery (if it being a girl) such as Britney Spears or Ciara or controversial and different, to make a new band stand out from others e.g. Arctic Monkeys 'whatever people say i am thats what im not'. Bigger bands usually do more simplistic covers, such as oasis, just using their iconic name font as the main image.

Sexualised girl album covers

3) Album covers serve many different functions, what do you think these are? (ie. what is their purpose)

The album covers ultimate purpose is to portray the artist and their music to their fans at a glance, encouraging them to buy the album and support the artist. Sometimes however it is used to portray the feel of the music in the album or the inspiration behind the new or debut album. As well as this it needs to be eyecatching to initially draw in potential buyers. If the artist is already built up it must appeal to the fanbase and target audience, with a new artist as well it must also appeal to the desired target audience, encouraging them to buy it further.