Inpirational Album Covers

In contrast to my partner, I really like album covers that are more action packed with little photos of things that some people can see as somewhat random, however people that take a interest and look further at the detail will realise that actually everything is there for a reason and it in someway has relevance to the album or the band. I spoke in a previous post how they Klaxons did this with their first LP - Myths Of The Near Future cover. It is action packed and absolutely rammed with lots of different colours and images that all relate back to the band and also the album.

I've been thinking a lot about my possible album cover and believe that with a lot of time and hard work I can produce something similar to Klaxons' album cover and that that is something I want to do.

Therefore I went about researching some other artists the have been using album covers that are not the simplest to produce and also in the sort of form of a collage.

Here's some of them;

This image is a very weird and wonderful one. I personally believe that it's very good. I really like the ripped effect that is being used on the paper, and I think this is definitely something I will be looking to do myself. There's also plenty of colour of this cover, which is something I definitely want to be having on my own, yet again this album cover also has some animals on in that perhaps relate to either lyrics, song names or maybe even just the band, which is something I also want to do.

This artwork is pretty strange and slightly random in places, despite this I like the idea and feel that the idea of having everyone crammed into a swimming pool is a somewhat bizarre idea, however still a good one. There seems to be a real pattern in the fact that the artworks I've come across often have animals in strange places. I think it really does work though and gives the album cover something different. For me this album cover probably uses animals to much, but I do like the idea of getting something such as a white rabbit or a cat in my cover.

This artwork is pretty self explanatory. The artwork is just lots and lots of different faces, all hand drawn with the effective use of shading. Despite it being such a simple idea it still looks good, however for my album cover I want to have more than just one object to be focussing on, I will hope to have many various objects that I will have on, I do like the repetitive idea and it is something I could look to be using, but maybe on a much smaller scale, for example only repeating something 2 or 3 times in various places around my front cover.

This Uffie artwork is one I really want to take some things from. Despite the artwork being covered in tacky pinks and golds, this artwork includes a lot of things that I've spoken about in my mock up front cover. I've already expressed my interest in having something such as a big close up of some lips on my front cover, and I believe this artwork really demonstrates how I want to do this and it looks good. 

Furthermore, this artwork also has some pretty weird animals on the front cover which I also think looks really cool, the whale and also the Flamingo. There's also some food on there, covered in hundreds and thousands which looks cool. I might steal the hundreds and thousands idea myself and use it as a bit of a background image in places. It's key that I don't get my artwork looking overly tacky however so it's crucial I get the balance right.

I'm not exactly sure what it is that made me want to upload this picture, but I really like it. 

I believe that it has come from the same artist above, Uffie, however i'm not 100% sure. It once again has the very effective use of the close up shot of extremely glossy lips which is something I like the idea of. Furthermore it has images of eyes which helps to along with pistols and some blue background helps to create a somewhat strange looking face. I will be attempting to recreate something similar for my front cover as I like this idea and believe that it is something that is eye grabbing, even on the smaller scale that I will be having it at. 

Finally this image is the front cover for Wu Lyf's album 'Go Tell Fire To The Mountain'. The whole album is basically 2 images that have been all put together separately, yet the album cover still looks remarkably good. I think this is further evidence that a collage sort of album cover can be done and despite this being somewhat simpler than the cover I am aiming to create I believe the foundation thought is very much the same.

In my eyes I've saved the best artwork 'til last with this one. This is a perfect example of what I am aiming to create. I has things in that I want to be using, the lips, nose and the whole idea of one big collage with images everywhere, yet still with a certain extent of meaning. I also like how pictures that were obviously not meant to be together have been put together and have been linked, for example the two yellow people who are staring astonished at the big pair of lips and even with the male of the two seemingly grabbing out and holding them. I've had a very similar idea with this image with some balloons where I intend to take two different pictures, however I plan to put them together and be able to get a reaction in one image to the image that it's linked to.

Overall, researching similar artworks to that of the type that I want to create has given me not only ideas for my own cover, but also the confidence in seeing that other artists have wanted the same from their artwork and that it is also very much something that is do-able.