Album Cover Reasearch

I particularly like this album cover (which is off Kanye west: The college dropout) because it depicts a sad story by the body language of the Teddy bear. The teddy bear is obviously a team mascot and has revieved some bad news, this links with the album title the college dropout. But it's particularly effective because you don't associate a teddy bear with sadness, you associate a teddy bear with happiness and children. I also think the colours are very interesting because you don't really see Hip-Hop album covers with these colours or the border around the main image, so he has pushed the bounderies in terms of what is acceaptable to to with this genre of music and i think this has the potential to influence our album cover massively.

  

This album cover of 50 cent is another option to inspire us. Although it is completely different to Kanye West's cover, it follows the normal conventions which are associated with the genre Hip-Hop. One of these being a big picture of the artist looking 'gangster' and portrait themselves quite arrogantly which most album covers in this genre do. Although this is less creative as Kanye Wests (above) and doesn't really push creativity at all, it is a good example of how Hip-Hop album covers are traditionally conveyed and could help us with our design of an album cover.

This is another example of an album cover which is pushing album covers in terms of creativity to the limit. What N.E.R.D (originally a hip-hop group have done to there album cover is also shown in there music. They have pushed away from the traditional Hip-Hop music and album cover. There music now has some influences of Blues, Jazz, Tribal and pop music. Therefore they have made an album cover which reflects this, The helmet could symbolise Jazz music because Jazz music was very popular around world war one time. The feathers could symbolise the tribal music which has influence there music, and the man in the picture is pharrell williams, and he himself heavily symbolises creative hip-hop music.

This is the album cover of Wiz Khalifa, Deal or no deal. This is a symplistic album cover which is replicated in his music because it is very traditional hip-hop. The main reason this is effective is the colouring which is tinted into the colour of him and makes him look part of the background, and the background is meant to replify his current city which is Pittsburgh. The reason he is made to look like part of the background is to try and symbolize that he is part of the city, and the city is part of him, although he spent some of his early years growing up in Germany. This aspect of the album cover is something which appeals to me heavily.

From these idea's I think our album cover should have some influences of conventional hip-hop covers by having an artist looking 'Hip-Hop' on the front just like 50 cent, this is to categorise where our music is coming from as we are not an established artist such as Kanye West or N.E.R.D so we can't be as boundless and have to try and stick in the bounderies of traditional hip-hop album covers. However I think we should take influence from Kanye West's teddy bears stance to show vulnerability as our song is about being alone. This could be done by having Josh Grimshaw having a stance similar to the teddy bears stance. We could also use N.E.R.D's representation of the music into the album cover by having a hip-hop/dance background, which the song is. We could also use the colouring of Wiz Khalifa's album because it looks good and purple is not a 'happy' and bright colour and our music isn't bright or happy really.