Album Artwork

I was curious what you guys like and don't like about album artwork. Doing this RPM challenge thing I kinda have to come up with artwork for my own album in less then 2 days. Flipping thru the few albums I have at work I notice some random stuff.

One of them doesn't have a track listing on the front or back, some of them use different fonts where some keep the same fonts throughout the work. One of them have "thanks to" sections, some of them have bizarre purpose messages documents.

So my question is simple, what sort of stuff do you guys like to see on album artwork?

vaginas

nice photography and a decent font

  tht! tne said:

vaginas

breasts

nice images, and minimal text.

the artwork i'm getting done for my new album will be images and no text on the outside, and then on the inside, the text will be printed with a gloss varnish so if you hold it up to the light you can see it. (i work for a printing company so i get this stuff free or cheap)

i agree with modey... minimal text and nice images!

and no shout outs!

numbered tracks with lengths

and (I really have to toot my own horn here) shit like this:

it's all about the shout outs

  vodor said:

numbered tracks with lengths

why? i prefer no track lengths

Minimalistic artwork/photos and minimalistic text.

  Squee said:

Minimalistic artwork/photos and minimalistic text.

a bit ironic :grin:

  tauboo said:

  Squee said:

Minimalistic artwork/photos and minimalistic text.

a bit ironic :grin:

:cry2:

What I mean is something like this:

I just like a good bold cover. Like pita - get down (see signature for upside down back cover and rightside up front cover). But I like clutter too (my favorite artwork of last year was M.I.A - Kala).

Just anything that's striking and stands out among all the crap. So what I'm trying to say is its 100% subjective for me, no real guiding principles, just feelings. But look at that pita cover, its so fucking good.

Thanks for all the feedback guys!

Just study up on basic design elements and principles. It doesn't take an education, but you can benefit from those awful first-level art classes. Text seems to be best if it's hand-made or very rare/unique, but not overblown.

Times New Roman

  tauboo said:

  vodor said:

numbered tracks with lengths

why? i prefer no track lengths

Gosh, I dunno. I like having that info. In the interest of data completeness, I guess. Sometimes I like to prejudge tracks based on their lengths too. I guess that's pretty messed up though actually.

But it gives an indication of the album's personality. An album full of uniform medium track lengths, few but very long tracks, many but very tracks, some very short and some very long tracks, etc.

Minimalism is a bit fashion, don't you think? You shouldn't give a fuck of what us guys are thinking about, and just doing something that you really want to see!

2 examples, my latest front covers:

that's awesome

  tht! tne said:

vaginas

i like something you can fold out into a sort of small poster