First Ancillary Task

The layout of this album cover is very plain. The artists name is at the top of the cover, which is very conventional for a music album. The name of the album is then just below it in a small font. The simplicity of the writing and the way it is laid out, I think reflects type of music Ben Howard produces. The font is very bold and a lot bigger than anything else on the cover, making it stand out so that audience instantly sees whose album is it. I think the best thing about this particular cover is the gradient in colour, from the top going down it gets darker and darker, starting off

white, then going to a dark blue, this gives a calming effect on the whole album, and gives the impression that this album is going to be relaxed. I like the image that has been used for this cover, purely because it raises the question on whether or not the man diving into the water is in fact Ben Howard. The back of the album, which is the image below, is clever in the sense that it is showing the person swimming back up to the surface of the water. This is actually a very common feature of an album cover. A lot of artists like it to look like a book. So with this, at the front of the ‘book’ Ben Howard is diving into the water, then at the back of the album, he is swimming back up, its almost like he’s set off on his journey, listened to the songs that come in the middle of the ‘book’ and now he is going back again.There isn’t really much that can be said about the mode of address, as the only text is simply who the artist is and what the album is called, however I will say that if this album was aimed at a young audience, there would probably be more writing on it to make it eye catching for them. When a product is quite plain and simple like this, then usually it is aimed for an older audience, as they do not need specific things to attract them to a product they like.

This is the second album cover that I have chosen to analyze. The layout of the album cover is quite conventional in the sense that there is a main image in the middle of the cover, and then it shows the name of the artist, and name of the album itself above it I think how the picture goes well with the title, ‘hand built by robots’, the image shows a mechanical hand, with different types of people in the palm of it. The font has been chosen to look quite mechanical as well, the big and small letters next to each other are examples of how it can be mechanical, mixed together with the rounded letters and different types of boldness, I think this is a good style of writing to use on this album cover. The colour of the background on this album is meant to connote the sky, the dark blue with white clouds in the middle represent the calm feel to the album, and this then reflects the hectic mechanical style that is originally seen. The back of the album cover is probably what you would expect to see on this sort of album. The list of the songs that are included are placed in the middle, so it is the very first thing you see, the font is still the same as the font that was used for the title of the album on the front, and so this makes it all come together. The astronaut that is pictured on the left of the cover, is the same one that was shown in the same place on the front, I think this was used to remind the audience that the album is called ‘hand built by robots’ therefore is probably set more in the future than anything. Another big convention of a album cover is the barcode at the back, and this is something I need to consider when designing my album cover because it is an important factor when trying to make it look realistic.