Album covers

What are the typical features of an album cover?

• Album name
• Band name
• Main image- generally of the band/artist
• Colour scheme that follows both back & front
• Institutional logos/name
  
• Track listings
• Bar codes
• Parental Advisory
• Price labels
• Top chart stickers
• No.1 notifications
• Names of all producers and people in the making
• Interlinking images on both front and back
  

How would you categorize album covers?

• Genre
• Release date
• Style
• Image type
• Audience
• Year of band
• Artist
• Band
• Number of albums
  

What are the purposes of album covers?

• Show genre
• Allow information of the track
• Promote the artist
• Word of mouth
• Create and identity for the band/artist
• Inform audience

Album cover analysis

Razorlight 'Up all night'

Again I do not know much about this band however, i was drawn to it. I think I'm drawn to the covers where the artists/bands aren't shown. i think it is more of a cover when you should know which band it is without having to see a visual of them.
This album cover is very retro and i like it, there is so much going on in a very simple way it makes you want to look at it carefully just so you can actually see whats there.


Front Cover:

• 'Razorlight Up all night' black bold font
• old fashioned TV top right of cover
• many different images and objects scattered across cover
• white background image of razorlight top
• vinyls
• keys to room at fowley Cornwall
• postcards
• swipe card
• paper with notes on

Spine:

• black background
• white text writing
• Razorlight in caps and large font
• 'up all night' in white print
• reference code
  
• hand written notes in black
  
• white background

Back Cover:

• white margin
• rest is white with black dots on it
• two strips of paper: white and red
• white has song titles:
• black bold font, different letters are different fonts and sizes
• left of is quotes 'to be played at maximum volume'
• red strip has the information of production/recording companies
• bar code underneath white piece of paper
• logo at bottom

Again, this album cover really appealed to me, i seem to like the ones that are different and with no artist on the cover.
The back cover on this is very different to any i have seen, in that the information and bar code are usually printed across the bottom in small print, however here it has been printed next to the song titles. Therefore neither are domination, and expressing both are just as important.

Album cover analysis

The Lemonheads 'All of these things sank'

I've decided to analyse this album cover, to be fair i do not know anything about this band but found the cover lurking my house and it really caught my eye.
A slight description of who they actually are, well, they are an American alternatice rockband formed in 1986 formed by singer/guitarist Evan Dando, who has been the bands only constant member.

I chose this band purely because out of the majority of them it was the most different and has something obviously strange about it that draws you to want to pick it up- which i think is needed in an Album cover.

The front:

• A childish looking cover
• background of a roughly coloured in piece of paper
• tatty white piece of paper stuck over
• dead space between images and writing
  
• 4 random images drawn like a toddler would've drawn them; car, button, 2p & cloth
• ^ car, button, cloth is the name of the album
  
• name of band written in red at the very bottom
• a brown 2p
• blue car
• yellow cloth with dots in
• red button
• all writing exc. name of band is black
• Name of band is in red

Spine:

• inside has alternating drawings of a van and a spikey dog thing
• lemonheads in pink
• car button cloth in white
• black background
• TAG recordings
• reference code

Back cover:

• 13 songs in black
• very small song titles left of side
• 3 cut out pictures of car cloth and button stuck acros the back
• big bold cartoon dog dominating the cover
• rough brown background
• bar code bottom left
• bottom right the information of production of the cover
• bottom centre logos
• 'produced by Bryce Goggin' small bottom of cover
  

Overall, the album cover follows the majority of the conventions and to me is a very well thought cover. It is different, easy and moreover very simplistic.
As they say 'little is more'

Progress

OK, we have now as a group finished a storyboard,
It has been colour co-ordinated; pink= narrative, yellow&green=London settings and blue= performance.

I am pleased with the overall storyboard and happy with the shots we have decided to draw in, however there doesn't seem many there, this is because as a group we love to experiment with different shots once we are actually in our location.

Therefore are going to give ourselves a bit of extra time to test out some challenging and different shots that may not be used so frequently. We think this will add a slight uniqueness to our video and really draw in audiences.

ALSO, we have scheduled to do a location recee sunday 18th.
This is mainly in aid of choosing our exact roads and surroundings to film in, because we obviously do not want our actor having to wait around alot for us to actually get organised.
We are planning on doing at least a whole day of shooting as we want our video to start from morning to evening, therefore we cannot afford to waste anytime faffing around that is unnecessary.

One day this week we are also planning on going to Sian's house and rading her wardrobe to find the costume we would like to use, then anything we do not have by next week we will have time to either buy or borrow off friends.

Hannah is in charge of make-up and hair and so we possibly may need to test out some different patterns before we shoot, however if this becomes too time consuming we will keep it minimal.

We have also now decided on definitely having a narrative, it is simple and will give us the added time we need!