Album Cover Analysis 'The Shade of Poison Trees' by Dashboard Confessional

Image & Typography

Just like the other album cover's I've seen that have caught my eye, this album has a single image within the center (this time of a disintegrating apple) along with the name of the artist and the album. What interested me about this though is that they've got so much space on the cover to put the title and image and whatnot, a move that was no doubt done to attract the audience with the image itself and instantly get them reading the name of the band and the album name.

Layout

The layout of the album is fairly simple. The majority of the content (image and text) is in the center, and the only other thing besides the orange (?) background is the dirty white outline to the background that helps to frame the content on the cover very nicely. On all the album covers I've looked at so far, I definitely prefer those that have framed themselves properly (unlike 'Boys Like Girls', which just seemed ruined by the background to me), and this does it pretty well.

Colour Scheme

This cover seems to have gone for the minimalistic route when it comes to a colour scheme, in that there are only three colours on the entire thing: dirty white, for the border and band name; orange (?), for the album name and background; and red, for the picture of the apple.

The fact that they decided to use a selection of colours that makes it all easy on the eyes was great and all, but the most interesting thing about it in my opinion is the choice of colour for the apple. The two out of the three colours on the cover are shared amongst two different elements each, but the red is saved specifically for the image and is the one that stands out the most, being fairly dark in comparison to the others. It helps massively with drawing the customer's attention to it, and thus the band name and album name.

I don't often have much appreciation for colour, being colour blind, but this has stood out as one of the nicest albums to look at if only for it's use of colour.

Album Cover Analysis 'Boys Like Girls' by Boys Like Girls

Image & Typography

Again, as with 'The Mouse and the Mask' by Danger Doom, this album has a very simplistic image and typography that works well for it. The title itself is a simple and plain font that actually leaves no spaces between the words of the artist's name but instead chooses to differentiate them by make the middle word unbolded. The image is of a cloud dripping what appears to be different colours onto a rectangle - at least I think that's what it is, but it could also be something completely different. The layers of colours work well for it, considering they make it stand out completely from the background, but I'm not entirely sure how the picture relates to the album, unless it's to do with one of the songs. It's very abstract.

The background itself tries to frame the whole thing by making it a gradient that darkens around the edges, but I don't think it really works because of how little difference there is between the colours being faded between.

Layout

Again like Danger Doom's album, this album simply consists of the artist's name (which is also the name of the album) above an image, but the simplicity of it works pretty well to attract your attention to it. I'd say one of the main problems with it though is that it doesn't look unique enough. Thought I've not seen an image quite like this, the general style it's gone for is something I've seen countless times and just wouldn't attract me to pick up the album if I saw it.

Colour Scheme

The colour scheme, in my opinion, was fairly well chosen. The variety of colours in the logo image really attract the attention to it, especially compared to the background and artist name, but really the plain, dull colours of the background and title put me off a lot from this. Looking at the first mockup album cover I made, I can tell that's probably one of the biggest problems to do with that too, and should probably go a background that really frames the cover properly.

Album Cover Analysis 'The Mouse And The Mask' by Danger Doom

Image & Typography

The album is called 'The Mouse and the Mask', but rather than having the title on the cover they've opted to have the image itself be the title - a mouse in a mask/helmet, resembling a skull and crossed bones. What works well about this is that the image itself is very interesting, and the main point of focus on the cover, and it's actually fairly simple - it's just a mouse in a mask with a paper-like background and the artist's name. The font used for the title also helps to make it seem like it's printed onto the background, with a traditional stencil-like font used.

Nothing complex needed, it works great already.

Layout

Having the image centered and being the main point of focus is appropriate, because of it being the replacement of a title, and the artist's name laying just over the image works well to let people know who the artist is. The edges of the paper-esque background also help the frame the whole thing rather than letting it trail off, which helps to make it seem a lot more professional.

Colour Scheme

The colours used help to seperate the title and artwork from the background fairly well, with the background itself having a beige-ish look to it that makes it obvious it's meant to be a piece of paper or some other similar material, and the texture of that background seems to be over the image and title as well (if faintly) to make them all seem like a single piece of paper as opposed to images placed on top of each other. None of the colours really stand out, but the fact that all of them don't stand out it a very flat - in a good way - image to look at that's easy on the eyes.

Storyboard Attempt Numero Uno

The storyboard, though not exactly what we've got in mind for the final video, has the basic elements to it. When trying to put it into the form of an animatic we found that the shots we had planned were just too fast, so what we're going to do instead is script and plan the two shoots, shoot them normally in as many ways as we can, and then potentially improvise to some extent in post-production whilst sticking to the storyboard as a general guideline rather than a blueprint.

The animatic itself will be improvised from the shots that we've drawn down, and will be closer to the final product than we have written down.

Oh yeah, and sorry for being a couple days late, it's Dale's fault.

Inspiration For Digipack

The first four of the album covers are ones that I like and have thought about for ideas for my final digipack but the last on is the one that I want to focus it on. This is because I want a rocket on the front cover of the album to link with the lyrics in are song “build a rocket boy”. But I want the rocket to be bluer and less red, in a up right position. This is what I want my rocket to look like…



Mockup Album Cover #1 ( Dale )

For this mockup I went for a colour scheme of three main colours (red, green and blue) and used a free set of photoshop brushes in order to create a face made out of watercolours, to go along with the album name 'Childhood Paintings'.

That album name is obviously temporary, but I quite like the idea of having an album cover based around a child-like design, because it sort of fits into the song we're using that focuses on cherishing their childhood.

The problems I can see right off the bat though are the titles are potentially too dark, and it doesn't really look centered on the screen very well... though that may just be me who thinks that, I have no idea how to properly center them and just did it through guess work. And apparently I can't guess well. I think trying to keep the design fairly simple like this though will look a lot more professional and be a lot easier to do.

The name of the album needs a lot of work. It doesn't sit well.

Album Cover Inspiration #1 ( Dale )

These two album covers are the ones that have struck me as being more appropriate for the type of music the band plays - they aren't crazy or intricate, and are fairly... flat, in terms of how they feel. That's probably not an appropriate description, but that's the only word I can think to describe it. Out of these specific two, I'd say that 'An End Has A Start' by Editors is having the biggest effect on what I've got in mind for my own.

The other album covers I had a look at generally didn't have the right feeling that I'm going for. For example, these:

Are all well and good, and fairly simplistic with the exception of 'The Rising Tied' by Fort Minor, but still have too much going on. For example, the clear point of focus on the Danger Doom album cover is the mouse mask (being an album called The Mouse And The Mask), but really that takes interest away from every other point on the cover that is otherwise uneventful, which works fine for what they were going for but not really for what I want. The contrast between the colors on the album cover of 'Hide From The Sun' by The Rasmus is also much too obvious for what I'm going for, but the design itself is pretty good. And finally, to be picky about the Boys Like Girls album cover, there are just too many colors for my liking - although that's making me think that the idea I have for my own is fairly average in comparison.

From looking and comparing these album covers to what ideas I have, it's actually helped me figure out what I want to do with my own album cover. Hopefully I'll have my first mock up done tonight or tomorrow.