The Iconography of the Album Cover

The art of the album cover is a curious one, part packaging, part advertising, often an insight into an artist's worldwide view and usually the happy result of a successful collaboration between creative minds, the best album cover art illustrates and accompanies the music in a way that creates the whole package. Julian House who is a creative partner at London creative agency, The Intro Partnership, speaks about how most of the direction for the album must be taken from the artists and this usually involves sit down discussions where the artist gives ideas, then the creative people go off and do several sets of visuals and present them, then hone it down from there. House also explains how the album sleeve is an entry point into the universe that the music is in, its a window into the themes of ideas of the artists and that there is defiantly a need for a visual accompaniment for the music and there is a resurgence of vinyl; special packaging sells quite well to a select. There are a lot of people still who need a tactile product, something to pore on.

Deconstructing album cover art
Album cover art can be extremely varied utilising photos, graphics, typography, or any combination of these. As a type of media text, it can be deconstructed like any other. When analysing it we can use the same tools we'd use to analyse and understand any visual media text.

Who made it, why how, for whom, and for what purpose?
It is vital to take into account who and why that person constructed a media text, but it is also important to think about who the audience is for any given text and how they may respond to it. Album covers are made to essentially promote the album, to be eye-catching and intriguing, and to tell us something about the musicians and the music contained in the album. While the immediate target audience is likely to be those who frequently buy music, especially those who are fans or specific bands, artists or genres, the artwork may be designed to attract a wider audience.

Associations & Connotations:
Detonation is identifying the elements in the image and connotation is examining what meanings and associations the image may link to. For an example, an image that denotes a powerful looking car may have connotations of speed or power, but in conjunction with other elements making up the art it might also have connotations of escape or thrill-seeking. On a pop or rap cover, there may be connotations of conspicuous wealth and extravagance, given that genres conventions.

Signs, Symbols and Codes
A sign is a representation that refers to something else and has meaning, such as the car. A code means the structure of how signs are organised into systems to make meaning. They are usually divided into the technical and the symbolic, there are also written codes that included the use of language and text layout.

Composition & Framing
This focuses on the construction of the album cover, like how do light, shadow and colour play a part. We refer to conventions as established ways of doing things, in this case, established forms of presenting and image. It can be helpful to examine how closely any given image tracks the conventions you'd associate with it, for example a death metal album sleeve might conventionally use a gothic or medieval-looking typeface, horror or occult based imagery, and a lot of black. Album cover art can also be self-referential, adding an extra layer of meaning to the image

Examples:

The painting on this cover is actually a fairly famous painting called 'A Basket of Roses'. A cryptic colour-based code is used to represent the band name and album title. This album cover suggesting that these songs will be fairly deep, meaningful and slow beat.








With its bold typography, simple colour scheme and striking, high-contrast photography, this is a classic example of iconic work which defines the classic 'Blue Note' look of this period. This album cover suggests that the songs contained will be fairly dark and depressing with a 'calm-rap' sort of sound.

This Pink Floyd cover was inspired by a physics text book and the band's desire to use a simple design. The artwork continues seamlessly around the gate fold sleeve. The impressions you get from this cover a far more broad and could be interpreted in anyway, but I feel that the the cover suggests that the songs will imply some sort of search for something.

After reading this article on the iconography of album covers I am more aware of what will be required on my cover in order to make it successful. I feel it is important to make the album eye-catching, thus multiple colours will be used in order to draw the audience in and as our target audience is teenagers who essentially have a shorter attention span, the colourful cover will work in order to keep the audience's attention. I want to ensure that there are connections between the front cover and the music contained, and since the song has a theme of limbo I feel that bizarre and unusual image will work effectively in giving clues of the content so the audience can connote the cover and what it may link to. In terms of signs and symbols, I feel a recurring thing in our video is the use of the Aztec print backdrop, so this will be incorporated in the album cover in order to again make codes that the audience can interpret.