There was not as much information as I could not find many past winners, but these are a selection. As you can see the covers are mainly illustrations, and I believe this is because it is easier to convey a message without being too obvious. I also think it is easier to show off originality through illustration, and you can convey more of a message on a small 7" vinyl cover. I think due to these reasons, I will try and produce a cover with illustrated material, even though that is not my strength in Graphic Design in order to try and challenge myself and to think outside the box, personally.
I decided to further my research by researching some of the most influential album art designers in the industry, starting with Peter Saville.
I think this cover by Saville is one of his more abstract covers, due to the layout of the cover (the monochrome set being offset to the image) and the use of inverted colour imagery as the cover. The grey background gives a low contrast effect to the cover which relates to the title, The Monochrome Set and I think the imagery relates to the album name, Strange Boutique because the imagery in itself is strange. The use of white space in this cover can be seen as quite modernist, although I think the offset title adds a hint of postmodernism.
I really enjoy this album cover because of the use of illustration mixed with typography to convey a clear message. The use of spacing between words and letters is used to represent time going slowly which I think is a very clever technique, adding a hidden meaning to an album cover. The mix of illustration and type is effective in both attracting the audience and informing them of what the cover is about, and the mix of black and off-white is aesthetically pleasing to the audience.
I think this is one of my favourite album covers ever made due to the process it took to create it. The drummer of Joy Division simply told Saville about the diagram, and Saville created an album cover with it. The simplicity of the process is interesting because he didn't seem to put tons of research into it, yet it became almost an icon of album art that almost anyone into music has seen today. The fact that something so simply made can become so influential is interesting to me and influences my work as I never try to produce anything too complex, as it starts to become hard to interpret to the audience. The image was actually of the first pulse sonar ever recorded, which has no relation to Joy Division in my knowledge which also makes this image interesting to me, I would like to know what persuaded Saville to create this as an album cover with no meaning or relation to the album itself.
After researching a number of Saville designs I have noticed he liked to alter the colours of his imagery, I personally think this is because he liked to create almost caricatures of his subjects by creating dream-like imagery. The use of text creates a wide amount of white space but one thing I noticed is that the text is not completely in the middle. This relates to the first album I described where the title was offset. This adds an element of post-modernism or "breaking the rules" as it looks quite awkward when you look at it for long periods of time. The use of a soft vignette on the album cover gives attention to the image in the middle of the frame and can be used to control the direction the audience looks first.
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