Iconic Album Covers

In this blog I will be researching into album covers from the past to analyse and help me understand what makes an artist stand out.

The first album cover I found was David Bowie - Aladdin Sane

Aladdin Sane is the sixth studio album by English musician David Bowie, released by RCA Records on 13 April 1973. The follow-up to his breakthrough The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, it was the first album he wrote and released from a position of stardom.

Aladdin Sane was released in the UK on 13 April 1973. With a purported 100,000 copies ordered in advance, the album debuted at the top of the UK charts and reached No. 17 in America, making it Bowie's most successful album commercially in both countries to that date. The album is estimated to have sold 4.6 million copies worldwide, making it one of Bowie's highest-selling LPs. The Guinness Book of British Hit Albums notes that Bowie "ruled the (British) album chart, accumulating an unprecedented 182 weeks on the list in 1973 with six different titles."

The second I found was Blondie - Parallel Lines

Parallel Lines is the third studio album by the American rock band Blondie. It was released in September 1978 by Chrysalis Records to international commercial success. The album reached No. 1 in the United Kingdom in February 1979 and proved to be the band's commercial breakthrough in the United States, where it reached No. 6 in April 1979. In Billboard magazine, Parallel Lines was listed at No. 9 in the top pop albums year-end chart of 1979. As of 2008, the album had sold over 20 million copies worldwide. The album spawned several successful singles, notably the international hit "Heart of Glass".

In a review of post-punk albums from the 1970s, Spin magazine's Sasha Frere-Jones said Parallel Lines may have been "the perfect pop-rock record" and Blondie's best album, while Christian John Wikane from PopMatters called it "a creative and commercial masterpiece by Blondie ... indisputably one of the great, classic albums of the rock and roll era." In the opinion of Pitchfork critic Scott Plagenhoef, the album popularized "the look and sound of 1980s new wave" with classic songs that showcased the depth and complexity of Harry's sexuality and singing. Sal Cinquemani from Slant Magazine was also impressed by her singing, which he felt varied from "purring like a kitten and then building to a mean growl", and cited "Heart of Glass" as the album's best track because of her "honey-dipped vocal".

Parallel Lines was ranked at number 140 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, number 18 and 45 on NME's 100 Best Albums of All Time and 500 Greatest Albums of All Time respectively, and number 7 on Blender's 100 Greatest American Albums of All Time. Rolling Stone wrote that the album was "where punk and New Wave broke through to a mass U.S. audience". The album was also ranked at number 94 by Channel 4's list of 100 greatest albums of all time. Parallel Lines was ranked the 76th best album of the 1970s by Pitchfork.

Digipak Research

There are well-established industry criteria for every product: logos, posters, CDs, business cards and stationery, advertising and websites. Here are some main criteria to help judge a design success.

1. Is it unified with the content or message you are trying to get across? This creates an immediate connection and sense of belonging.

2. Is there an information and visual hierarchy? This means there's a focal point or image that grabs your attention first, and then your eye is led around the design in the order of what is important after seeing the main image of reading the main text.

3. Does the design have graphic impact? Is it distinctive or memorable? There are many CDs competing with yours for attention, lots of these are sent out to producers and designers, this means it must be a major contender.

4. Is it appropriate for whom you want to attract and the environment in which it will be presented? A poster or CD for a country audience will not have the same look and feel presentation as for a heavy metal one.

The golden era of cover art design began in the early to mid 1960s and lasted into 1980s. During this time the major format for music was 12 inch, long play disc or LP.Cover art became a part of the musical culture of the time. Often used to express graphically the musician's artistic intent, it helped connect and communicate to listeners the message or underlying theme of the album.

Album cover art, now almost exclusively CD and CD packaging artwork, went through a period of change and rebirth in the 1990s.

Digipak Tasks

1. Read article - picket points and add to blog.

2. Find iconic covers and analyse and what made it iconic
3. Design brief, hand draw.

Week Preview 13th November

In this blog I will be outlining the plans me and my group have for this upcoming week starting 13th November:

Group - Finish storyboarding and edit the animatic and put that on our blogs

Myself - I will research more into Digipaks

Roles

Myself, Jack and Kaan sat down an discussed the roles we will uptake in the production and planning of our music video. Firstly, we have decided that I am going to be the cameraman and the cinematographer. We felt as if this was the best role to assign to me as I feel more comfortable in this role because I have previous experience in this role from last year. In addition to this Kaan has been assigned the role of editor and director and much like me, Kaan has previous experience in this role from last year and enjoys editing and does it in his free time. Finally, the role we assigned Jack, we have given him the role of choosing and bringing the costume, props and choosing the settings. We felt as if Jack could choose appropriate locations to shoot as he has good knowledge of Camden and also he has the appropriate costumes already that our character wears.

Artist Background

DAZE

The name of our artist is DAZE and his real name has not yet been revealed by the artist. He is 16 years old and is from South East London and still attends secondary school.  

He has always had a deep passion for music and has and still does write lyrics at home in his room and during break, lunch and lessons at school. He has always had aspirations to become a musician and write his own music. After he had produced a few songs he put together an EP and go round shops truing to promote his EP and sell it to shops in order to develop his reputation. 

Despite pushing his music career forward and trying to sell his music to stores, he is a very shy character and is also quite mysterious, an example of this is the fact he has not revealed his name. He has hardly any friends at school and is very much so trying t0 find his place in the world. His core belief is that nothing is perfect and everyone and everything has its imperfections. 

Lyric Analysis

In the lesson, myself and Jack printed out the lyrics to our song, Heathens, and annotated them and put what shots we will have and what the shots will include. This was a good task as myself and Jack worked well together and both agreed on all of the shots and types of shots we are including in the video. We got this sheet scanned and now are looking to use this sheet in order to help us start the storyboarding process.

Our Font

The font we have chosen to use is Hand Shop Typography C30 by Fontscafe.com as it keeps the line through the Z, which was an integral part of our original design, and it is quite an edgy font which represents the genre of music our song is and our artist's personality.

Choosing New Font

As a result of our pitch, our original logo received negative feedback so we have decided to change the logo, but we will be keeping the same colour (purple). These are the logos we have chosen to be our final logo. We feel as if all of these logos represent the genre of music we have chosen and the personality of our artist.

Pitch Feedback

Myself, Kaan and Jack presented our pitch and idea to our classmates and received very useful feedback which we will try to use and take on board in order to make our artist and brand better.

Positive Feedback; 

• The song choice
• The artist's background 
• The label
• Locations made clear

Constructive Feedback; 

• Narrative of video was not made clear
• Our artist's name was unknown 
• Too young