First with the advent of CDs & then downloading many people have been mourning the death of LP size artwork & while I still believe we haven’t seen even a fraction of the potential of embedded artwork there is no denying the 12″ LP is a unique format for design. The added challenge for designer nowadays is creating memorable artwork that can scale, from a tiny ipod screen through to CDs and still in some cases LPs…. Some net labels lead by example with embedded artwork, for example the thinner label include both static & animated digital artwork with their downloads & when you consider the small file size of graphic images vs the music files it is hard to understand why any company selling music downloads does not include at least a copy of all the artwork that would accompany a CD release… Sleevage is an interesting blog about music cover art, but a post specifically about the future of album artwork on the Design Observer blog: Are JPEGs the New Album Covers? generated a lot of interesting comments & links and is well worth a read…
If like me you already have a drive full of music most of which has no attached artwork there are many ways of reattaching artwork – there is a wiki here explaining the process of getting artwork for itunes & ipod, but I have found Dougs AppleScripts site here to be an excellent resource for automating the process…
As the year grinds to a hault, many journalists & bloggers get busy generating ‘best/worst of the year’ lists & of course album artwork inevitably joins those lists, so check out Pitchfork 20 Worst Album Covers of 2008 here and Brain Pickings Best Album Covers of 2008 here. But as far as lists go, album artwork is an easy target – a quick google search rapidly provided; the 28 Weirdest But Most Enticing Album Covers of All Time here, Grupthink best albums of all time here, Smashing Magazines 35 Beautiful Music Album Covers here but the most common (& amusing) lists are often of the supposed worst artwork such as this site or this or this or this or this
There is also an entire subculture of manipulating existing album artwork – Sleeveface is the most immediate example, theres a good interview with the person who started that meme at pingmag here and check the mini-documentary below:
B3ta held a competition with the brief being to extend album artwork & some of the results are genius!
And of course the LEGO subculture became involved, in one case recreating 20 classic album covers and in another recreating classic hip hop album covers
Lastly, this video is possibly the cleverest use of album cover artwork yet. Having the idea is one thing but implementing it quite another!
