Music Album Covers



Beyonce's R&B album '4'

Rihanna's R&B album 'Talk That Talk'

A$VP Rocky's Hip Hop album 'Live Love Asap'

On an album cover there will always be a main image. Sometimes it’ll take up the entire front cover and sometimes it’ll be smaller in order to fit in bolder texts. I’ve noticed that with R&B album covers, it’s almost always a picture of the artist and it takes up the entire front canvas. This not only acts as a recognition mechanism for the target audience but it is also eye catching and endearing. The main image on an album cover communicates with the audience. It presents the kind of message the artist is trying to get across.

However, with alternative genre bands such as RadioHead, they choose to use illustrated pictures which haven’t ever been of them themselves.

The artists name is also most often presented on album covers. This is also used as a recognition mechanism for the target audience. However, some R&B album covers have challenged this. Artists such as Rihanna on her ‘LOUD’ album cover didn’t put the artists name on the front cover, rather, a picture of her was used as the main image and because she is such an established artist, it was felt that a picture was enough.  On other album covers the name of the artist is made to stand out secondary to the image and/or the name of the album.

The name of the album is very important because like the main image it sets a theme for the album, even more so because it could give us a sense about the album will be like, what sort of songs it includes and so on. Rihanna’s album ‘LOUD’ gave the audience a sense that it would be an upbeat, pop album. Furthermore, the font of the name of the album could give the audience a sense of genre; nevertheless, the font will be in common with the colour scheme and overall presentation of the entire album cover. For example, Lily Allen was an urban tomboyish female singer and the name of her album and name were in graffiti font on the front cover of her album. It employed the kind of style, colour and text that would appeal to her target audience and represent her as an artist.

Other things that appear on the front of music album covers are:-

-          Artist motifs

-          Name of record label

-          Barcode

-          Parents Advisory label