Not only does our album cover have to clearly express our band's image, but it also has to work with our brief. With that said, we were able to recognise some trends that will influence our own album cover design.
Many classic and contemporary rock album covers will display conceptual themes on the album cover. This ranges from striking and eye-catching art styles to minimalist designs of art or text. Some of the most famous and iconic album covers use conceptual artwork to represent their band image. As shown by Nevermind by Nirvana, conceptual album covers can also be used to make comments or critiques on various topics, which could allow us to explore some very sophisticated ideas. Whilst a concept would fit with the image of our band that we want to display in our music video, our brief means that we have to have our band in the cover. Therefore concept will probably not be the most notable feature of our album cover.
It is common for a debut album to showcase the band or artist in the album's cover. This is also the case with rock music album covers: the debut albums of The Ramones and The Beatles are some classic examples of this. This will be an important feature of our album cover as it is both a successful and recognisable trend, but is also required as part of our brief. The debut album cover of The Ramones in particular is one that has heavily inspired our ideas for the cover, as the band image we want to express is that our band is a simple group of friends who love music. With that said, we can include small details in the costume, pose and expression of our band members to sculpt a unique persona for each of them. We feel as though a straight-forward simplistic approach like that of Ramones is the best way to connote this.
With all of that said, it is also possible for us to combine both of these styles: not only has this been done with a reasonable amount of success, but it allows us to anchor the image created through our music video. The album Elephant by The White Stripes uses an impactful juxtaposition in colour which catches the audience's eye. As well as this, there are a number of signifiers in the album, including the rope tied around the left woman's leg and the ceiling light. The rope has connotations of imprisonment, whereas the ceiling light stands out on its own; therefore suggesting isolation. It would be interesting to experiment with this idea of multi-layered signifiers, especially when constructing the persona of our band members.
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