CD Covers

So I began to look at CD Covers – it’s something that we’re going to have to tackle sooner or later, so it’s better off researching and gaining ideas from the bands we’re currently researching now whilst it’s on our minds. Whilst getting some images for the CD Covers off of Google, I had to admit to the effective marketing as well as genre branding that the CD cover has – I first hand have bought a CD purely because of its cover:

(Motion City Soundtrack – My Dinosaur Life) I’d never heard of this band and had never looked into them, yet I couldn’t resit the CD and bought it. I knew it was alternative rock, though why? Because I’m used to the branding image being sold along with the songs – it’s a stylish icon as well as a strong marketing technique in respects and the more and more you look at alternative rock CD covers, you see similar illustration or fantasy related covers:

(Blink 182 – Neighbourhoods) Again, it has that illustration element of it.

(Good Charlotte – BC) The simplicity mirrors the cover of Blink 182 and MCS.

Then there’s sort of the classic, 90-00 style of CD cover such as Sum 41 - just to reference the black and white conventions, the division of the cover.

Though moving into the modern phase, I begin to see more stuff like this:

(Jimmy Eat World – Futures)

(Linkin Park – Meteora) an early 2000 album cover has the early makings in what we see in modern 2006+ alternative rock CD covers.

(Paramore – Brand New Eyes) 2006

(Thirty Seconds to Mars – This is War) 2009

In the modern age of alternative rock CD covers, what we begin to see more of is this division on the cover – its simplistic, yet powerful, it’s more about photography and composition than it is offering style like the illustrated pieces that really snatch your attention, though when I personally see these, more so when you look for alternative music, that the simplistic divided up cover, with something in central focus of the piece, is something that’s just becoming more and more iconic and modernised. It’s almost a sense of iconography itself, without having to sell the image of the band but just their name; it gives me a starting point to gain inspiration from.