Conventions of CD album covers

Linkin Park – Living Things

Main image takes up most of the cd cover

Minimalism is used: cover is very bare, showing only what is needed/getting straight to the point

CD title and name of the band (top of the cover) is small, modern and very modest; not “in-your-face” at all

BarcodeSong names/ contents

Copyright & address of record label

Record label icons

Main image/content image

Album covers such as this one are minimalistic. It’s quite surprising that even though they are quite simple and use dull colours, they are quite well liked. This may be due to going well with the genre of the band (bands with serious songs e.g. about love and life) use these darker colours, in contrast to bands like the Red Hot Chili Peppers who have quite a fun and adventurous sound and use bright colours and shapes for their cd albums.

The fonts used are also in a dull colour (black, grey, white) which goes along with the rest of the theme of the album cover. The size of the fonts are small too, assuming you’d recognize what band made the album by looking at it’s picture on the front cover.

Main image takes up most of the cover, brightly coloured and bold

Muse – The Resistance

Title of the album, again small and modest

The bands name is the biggest text on the front album cover. Placed at the top left corner

Image of the band, blurred (distorted like the genre of the album)

Barcode

Copyright & Record company address + record label icons

Track listings

This album cover is the opposite of the one analysed before; it uses lots of different colours and shapes to catch the audience’s attention, yet the majority of the songs on the album have a serious theme (e.g. politics, apocalyptic events).

The font colours are quite dark on this album cover too and the size/fonts are small and modest.

These are two contrasting examples: the first is minimalistic, using bland colours and photo of a single person (with some effects going on) whereas the second uses bright colours to draw people’s attention.

Both were very successful commercially, indicating that this colour scheme/layout worked (to some extent at least).

On both covers, the album titles and band names are in quite small font. This is probably because they are two well known bands and don’t need to advertise their name as much to gain attention.