I am going to do some research for our Digipak album cover and I am going to focus again on bands or artists within the same genre. I am doing this so that when it comes to me designing my own album cover, I can have some examples that I can either use as inspiration, or I can use them to see how they use genre conventions on the album covers.
An album is made up of many things, and there are certain things that most albums have to have on each side.
Front cover:
- Name of the album
- Name of the band (this is the biggest and most obviously written thing because that is what your selling)
- Parental Advisory (if applicable)
There are some certain exceptions in album covers where the artist is so well known that they no longer have to do this, and can draw the focus completely either on the album name, or on the album artwork. Here is an example of that - Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd.
The back of the album cover also needs certain things on it as well.
- Legal information
- Numbered track-list
- Barcode
Here are a couple of examples of the backside of an album and how the things listed above are incorporated on the design, or if they are hidden away.
As you can see, all 3 of these albums have the legal information, but not all three have the song list and the barcode. John Lennon's "Imagine" album does not have the song list or the barcode. I have done some research into where the barcode may have gone, and I think the barcode was either put on the plastic cover over the album when one buys it new from a store, or it may also be in the inside cover. The song list is also not on the back of his album cover, but this is because despite this being John Lennon's first solo album in the year 1970, he was still one of the biggest musicians on the planet after a 10 year career with the band "The Beatles", who as you can see, earlier in their career, had to have the barcode on the back cover (top picture).
Other information about album covers that I have learnt is that there are essentially two kinds of album covers.
- A photoshoot album cover
- A concept artwork album cover
Choosing between these two types of album cover essentially comes down to whether we want the band on the album cover, and that also comes down to the genre conventions. Here are some example of photoshoot album covers.
These three are all examples of photoshoot album covers, and they all feature the artist, and so all the albums are selling the artist heavily. Now, here are some examples of concept artwork album covers, and as you can see they are very different. 
I also got told about this amazing and very widely used concept artwork album artist called Sam Spratt, and he has done some of the most influential and familiar album covers of the last decade, for example "Man on the Moon III" by Kid Cudi, "Bobby Tarentino II", and also "Everybody" by Logic:
I have also linked his website below, which showcases a lot of his work. As you can see, he kind of combines the concept artwork album covers with the photoshoot album covers to create something really interesting and unique for each album.
Now, I am going to do some research into digipaks and album artworks that are from artists from the same genre as our band, so I can again find some inspiration, but also learn how they are presented and get a better understanding of the album covers within the genre of our band.
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