Final Digipak

Album Cover - Artist

Jessie J - Who we are

Jennifer Lopez - Love

Rihanna - R rated

Joe McElderry - Classic Christmas

Adele - 21

As you can see by the album covers above, a common convention that artist regularly follow whilst producing an album cover is to place a picture of themselves on it. The sole purpose of this is to allow the buyers to recognise the artist; acting as self-promotion. The artist will therefore become recognisable and known to the audience. This will encourage the formation of a relationship between the audience and artist, creating a fan base. An increase in fan base will create an increase in the number of albums sold, which will help the artist become successful in both the music industry and in the media. 

Analysis of Katy Perry's album 'Teenage Dream'

Analysis of Katy Perry's album 'Teenage Dream' - CD Cover

Analysis of Katy Perry's album 'Teenage Dream' - CD Discs

Analysis of Katy Perry's album 'Teenage Dream' - Back Cover

Lady Gaga Digipack Analysis

Album Cover Inspiration

This if one of our original examples of a typical boy band. We didn't pick this for the colours or the background layout but simply for the way the band was presented on the pane. Looking at the positioning of each member, looking at their facial expressions and their body positions. Although we chose not to copy any of these attributes, we did still use the idea of advertising the band on the front pane. 

Album Cover Inspiration

This album cover reminds me of the idea of fun and games, reflected in the idea of the pictures of the running man and the aeroplane. The aeroplane makes me thing of holidays which has the stereotype of sun and fun on the beach. The reason for using this as inspiration is the small image of the band in black, in the top, centre of the pane. This is because we had the idea of putting something like this in the top corner of our album cover. 

Album Cover Inspiration

This is an album cover. This is similar to the way in which we want our Scouting For Girls album cover to look. It has bright pastel colours that grab the audience's attention. It also has the band shown on the front which again is similar to what we want for our cover. The only difference is that we would like the band in the top corner of our cover because although we want to advertise the band members we want the album name to stand out more. All slide of our album are going to be bright colours that stand out and this album cover inspired us to think of that idea. 

Album Cover Analysis - Bruno Mars

Album Cover Analysis - The Saturdays

I have chosen to analyse the album cover of the British girl band, The Saturdays. They are a pop band with a target audience of young girls from the ages of roughly 13-23. They are signed to Polydor Records and this is their 4^th studio album, which was released at the end of 2011. The audience of this band will most likely buy this album for pleasure and escapism. It is a fun, dance music album with larger than life topics. The lyrical content of this album is carefree and creates a surrealistic world of no worries. This is what one would expect from a pop girl-band.

Final back cover

Back cover ideas

These are some of the different colour/style options we designed for the back cover.

Album Cover Progression

Using the paint bucket tool, we coloured the glass black. We then used the blur tool to blur the inner edges of the frame of the glasses. This allowed it to look more realistic and also blended in the two materials together as if they were one piece.

Comparison of The Saturdays' album covers

The Saturdays album covers compared

Here are the album covers of that the pop girl band ‘The Saturdays’ have released.  Here are the similarities between their own albums:

• ·       Band name text- the band name has been written in the same font and style throughout all the covers which becomes an iconic style for them and allows the target audience to instantly identify.
• ·       There is a common concept of using bright colours.
• ·       There is a common theme between the girls, be that the make-up, clothes or even style of posing.
• ·       In all the album covers, they seem to be making the main attention-drawer their bodies. This is done by their style of posing, which accentuate their long legs. This is done to portray them in an idolistic way, so their demographics (young females) look up to them and aspire to be like them.
• ·       Even though their demographics are young females, they still have a sex appeal to the male audience. LAURA MULVEY argues that this voyeurism involves turning the represented figure itself into a fetish (object) so that it becomes increasingly beautiful but more objectified. Fetishistic looking, she suggests, leads to the cult of the female celebrity, celebrated for her looks but considered as an object and often treated as such.
• ·       Male stars are active, dynamic and not always conventionally attractive. Female stars, on the other hand, must be glamorous and attractive. Therefore, they are seen as ‘eye-candy’ to appease the male gaze of the male audience. Moreover, even though their main demographics are young females, they dress and illustrate themselves in a manner that will attract the male gender towards them as well. This helps to increase their awareness and widen their audience.
• ·       DAVID GAUNTLETT argues that in contemporary society, gender roles are more complex and that the media reflect this. He points out that female role models today are often glamorous as well as successful in a way that previously they were not. He states that much of this is due to the rise of ‘girl power’ and ‘women independency’ in the media, through identities constructed by music artists such as DESTINY’S CHILD and THE SATURDAYS. However, The Saturdays are a recent establishment. This is as well as contemporary actresses, for example, who are demanding less passive film roles. He argues that our expectations of gender are flexible and culturally dependent, therefore will continue to change.

Practicing The Album Cover 5

Practicing The Album Cover 4

Practicing The Album Cover 3

Practicing The Album Cover 2