Below are a variety of different album covers from a number of genres, artists and era's. As I will soon be creating album artwork for my upcoming song production, personally its very beneficial to look at existing album covers to try and take some inspiration.
The first of the seven album covers is of course the iconic artwork of The Beatles. This cover shows the band walking across a zebra crossing. Although it may be a simple idea, it was certainly effective, causing Beatle fans across the globe to visit Abbey Road (The location of the image on the album cover), in order to re-create this picture. The instantly recognisable album cover is well known the world over, and is almost as popular as their actual songs!
The second cover is also another evident offering from The Beatles, although this one takes a slightly different approach. Instead of an image or any form of artwork, we see just grey text on a plain white background stating the bands infamous name. This minimalist design has too, been imitated by other modern artists, loving its simplicity and basic nature showing some of the best artwork is no artwork at all!
The third album cover is another iconic piece of artwork, this time from Pink Floyd. A single ray of light enters the triangle and comes out the other side as a rainbow. It may not seem much, but this very image is commonly seen on posters or even framed when put upon walls by fans of the artist and the English rock bands captivating artwork.
Album cover number 4 is a more recent offering from award winning artist Adele, once again following the simplistic trend. The cover depicts a close-up of the artists face in a harshly under lit scene. Much like her previous album covers, It has a monotone feel to it, with the photograph shot in black and white and the little colour shown coming from the Album title '21'. The album received a whopping seven grammy awards, making it an all round overwhelming success.
The fith cover is Chris Brown's Fortune. What at first looks like a bunch of random symbols and signs toward the middle of the cover is in fact the word 'Fortune' encrypted in code, a simultaneously interesting yet confusing album cover. The background also includes the word fortune, this time in a collage of different languages, a subtle addition to the cover that I believe adds to its appeal. The centrepiece is of course a typical vein shot of the artist himself.
The penultimate album is by popular boy band Take That. On this occasion, the album artwork related to its title 'Progress'. The image shows several men each represent a stage in life very similar the images related to Darwin's theory of Evolution. This heavily links to the albums title as it is essential portraying the progress of man.
Finally the seventh Album is from recently split pop boy band JLS. I chose this cover as I find it is suspiciously similar to that of Adele's 21 released in 2011. Same monotone style, similar portraits of the artist(s) and the same hint of colour within the text. Despite this potentially being a coincidence, I would be inclined to believe that Adele took some inspiration from this cover released 2008. Although I cannot fault the album artwork, the album quite rightly did cause some confusion as the title of the album is 'JLS', the same name as the band.
Regardless, I can still take inspiration from this artwork along with the 6 other albums listed here and thousands more out there. They have sparked my imagination and got my creative juices flowing as I begin to plan what I want my album cover to look like.
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