The art of an album cover is a curious one. Part packaging, part advertising, often an insight into an artist's world 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 a whole package. Julian House states how most of the direction of a music cover must be taken from the artists themselves. He also explains how an Album sleeve is an entry point into the universe that the music is and how it is a wind into the themes an ideas of an artist.
Deconstructing album cover Art:
Album covers can be extremely varies, 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
Associations and connotations:
denotation, means simply identifying the elements in the image, and connotation means examining what meanings and associations they might link to. On a hip-hop cover it may well have connotations of conspicuous wealth and extravagance, given that genre's conventions
Signs, Symbols and Codes:
A sign is a representation that refers to something else and has meaning. A code means the structure of how signs are organised into systems to make meaning. These are usually divided into the technical and the symbolic
Composition and Framing:
This focuses on the construction of the album cover, e.g. light, shadow and colour. We refer to conventions are established ways of doing things, in this case they mean established forms of presenting an image. it can be helpful to examine how closely any given image tracks the conventions you'd associate it with.
Examples:
Pink Floyd 'The dark side of the moon' was inspired by a physics textbook, and the bands desire to use a simple design rather than a photograph. This famous cover also nods to Pink Floyd famous light shows.
John Coltrane 'Blue Train' - with its bold typography, simple colour scheme and striking, high contrast photography, this is a classic example of the iconic work of Miles and Wolff which defines the classic 'blue note' look of this period
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