Secondary research presentation on types of album art design

1. DIGIPAK/ALBUM ART RESEARCH
Design Bump: ‘Album Artwork – Design’s Greatest Trends’
Michael Scotney

2. INTRODUCTION
 DesignBump is a website which publishes articles based
on everything to do with design – from examples of
photography, tutorials and even facts.
 The article I read for my music video research is entitled
‘Album Artwork: 2009’s Greatest Design Trends’, which
is a modern outlook on where album art design is and is
going.
 It lists the different styles of artwork coming into
popularity, with examples and reasons which I will list in
this presentation.

3. PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY
 Portrait photography is crucial for solo artists – but not so much
for groups/bands.
 The article says that the portrait helps put a face to the name and
feel more connected to the artist. It makes them more aware of
the artist when seen on TV for example in the future.
 This links to Richard Dyers’ star image theory – the
representation of the artist in the picture is used to importantly
market the artist in a way to appeal to a certain target audience –
and make them more likely to buy the album.
 It says that they tend to be close-up macro shots usually of the
artists face that fill the area, so the customer/viewers full attention
is on the artist for the reasons explained above.

4. PHOTOGRAPHY
 This next style is explained simply in that powerful/eye-
catching pictures are all that is needed to bump sales.
 This is because the customers/viewers are compelled to
check it out as they have been intrigued by the nature of the
photograph. Then they listen to the music and a percentage
end up buying it.
 These examples below do not even need any typography of
the band – the pictures are that effective.

5. ‘GRUNGE’
 The article explains how album covers are now more
commonly using a technique from graphic design and web
design; ‘Grunge’.
 A loose term, it refers to album art containing elements that
are deliberately rough, unfinished looking, alternative in both
convention and material, innovative or controversial.
 This is used predominantly for bands as opposed to solo
artists – and also depends significantly in genre. Rock and
metal bands are big users of this – whereas classical and
easy listening artists are not.

6. TYPOGRAPHY
 The style of writing of the bands’ name, or other relevant
information and colour schemes of the typography like the
image trend can often be enough to grab attention.
 The stylised theme based on its relevance to the particular
band/theme/genre can make the album appealing and so the
customer chooses the album over its competition.
 It can also work focusing the audiences attention to the simple
words written and so make the band name stay in the
customers’ head for example, as opposed to possibly being
distracted by a picture.

7. OTHER STYLES
 Then the article listed the other styles of album art also used
including digital, hand drawn, minimalistic and black and white.
 These styles were explained in more detail in the DesignBump
article, but it reminded me of these styles that could be used for
effect. Below are examples of a digital illustration album cover, a
both black and white and hand drawn album cover, and a digital
minimalist album cover.

8. EVALUATION
 In evaluation of the secondary research, as the portrait
photography style is not suited to our genre of music, the band, or
their themed album art/Digipak so we will not be following this
type.
 In particular, the grunge style is something to take forward into
planning. The Green day album cover with spray paint is
something I think could really work well with the Demon Hunter
theme of logos on the album cover. It could be used to spray the
logo onto a wall for example, and this grungy effect created also
links to the metal chosen genre.
 Photography is also something to take forward into planning – as a
photograph can catch the audiences attention easily which is
important for a Digipak/album cover.

9. EVALUATION CONTINUED
 Next, for the other styles contained in the, black and white, for
example, these are all things that we will bear in mind when
coming up with our creative ideas. However, I feel black and
white is not in keeping with what the target audience expect from
past album covers.
 As said in other research, hand drawn is again something that
would not be possible for us to do but minimalism is a great idea
we could implement as we will want the audience to concentrate
on the trademark skull logo.
 Another important thing I’ve learned from the article is
typography. I think from this we will combine typography to be in
keeping with the main (grungy) design style to create a calibrated
and piece that fits together nicely. In conclusion, I have learnt a
lot of knowledge to take into planning and creating from this
DesignBump article.