The Ever Shrinking Album Image – From LPs to Thumbnails – Is There Hope?

By: Rustycat | in: Music |

iron maiden killers album cover

With endless debates and blog posts later – does the album artwork really matter? Can we deal with the shift from a large image on a record jacket through a CD jewel cases and now to a few tiny pixels on an iPod?

We can argue for days about whether a good album cover really helps artists sell albums. In my opinion, as always with design and especially in the “attention deficit disorder internet generation”, a shiny clever image is what it is all about. Think about it for a second, what made you follow that weird guy you don’t know on twitter? What made you keep reading that blog, and what really made you download that album? Could it have been the image, the thumbnail, the avatar?

After years of talented designers like Storm Thorgerson, well known for creating a cultural landmark with the Pink Floyd covers, welcome to the new age where the album artwork is nothing but an album avatar. What were cultural icons like Iron Maiden’s Eddie playing around in beautiful sci-fi backdrops or The Beatles crossing Abbey Road have now become a 100X100 pixel icons at best.

Wired elegantly addressed this issue and pointed out that when Napster launched they didn’t even preview album artwork and iTunes barely revealed the images when searching. Although, seeing the effect it had on consumers now iTunes displays its rich album scroller and my iPod became a full screen album artwork machine.

Wired go on to solve the problem and complement a few innovators who took a chance and succeeded on bright ideas like Bon Jovi’s ‘Have a Nice Day’ and the people behind Big Active design studio who made the cover for the Enemy’s We’ll Live and Die in These Towns. The idea was a fully interactive railway departure board when each time the track changed the new song name would appear.

Bon Jovi and The Enemy

Which teaches us that simple, graphic and clever is what it’s all about these days. Sometimes you’ll have nothing but a second to catch the consumers’ eye and if you missed them, they’ll end up listening to a different band. Sad, but use it to your advantage.

Then, should I even invest in album artwork? Hell ya!

I must admit for an avid music fan who downloads, buys and listens to over 30 new albums a week, it often comes down to whether an image catches my eye or not. Remember, looking at an image online or off, is much easier than listening to thirty seconds of a track just to get the feel of what’s to come in the next forty or so minutes.
Looking at 2008 yearly album artwork round ups, Rolling Stone awarded the first place placement to The Killers ‘Day & Age’ album which is a pretty dull and simple, yet quite a colorful eye catcher. The most interesting one for me was number 4 on the list – Metallica’s ‘Death Magnetic’ - a perfect example of what the new artwork should look like.

album2

So do album covers still work? They sure do. Be creative and it will pay off. If not, you can always take comfort in being immortalized on this list: http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/worst-album-covers

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Posted on April 5, 2009

Comments

4 Responses to “The Ever Shrinking Album Image – From LPs to Thumbnails – Is There Hope?”

Kendall on April 7th, 2009 2:15 pm

THE ALBUM will make a mild comeback soon. Don’t worry.

DThompson on April 14th, 2009 8:48 am

I recall a similar article when the CD became popular, a designer said that the content of album images was going to have to shift from complicated baroque imagery like Santana’s Abraxas and The Beatles’ Sargent Pepper’s Etc. Etc. to strong basic images, and he used as an example a current Aerosmith CD titled Pump which had as its cover a nice photo of an old truck. Looking at the two examples above I’m reminded of trying to design an 1/4 inch by 1/4 inch icon for myself on a not very popular social news site which shall go unnamed, it (obviously)had to be very basic. Watch for ‘album’ art to get ever less complicated. In fact, watch for albums to vanish entirely, they’re an ever more artificial format for selling music based on plastic discs and this is just NOT how people consume music anymore. Instead of a group putting out an album a year look for a return to a single (or even just a song) ever month or two. Albums allow for filler songs, designed to be the flip sides of physical vinyl 45 rpm singles… which no longer exist. The whole concept of an album is dead dead dead in the digital age.

gern on April 15th, 2009 10:15 am

Iron Maiden rules.

Ambient Guy on May 7th, 2009 7:54 am

V.Interesting article. Its a problem close to my heart. I have increased the pixelated album art on my site from 50×50 to 150×150 in the last month. (http://www.ambientmusicgarden.com)

I would like to see the tech that supports the music industry now move to animated album art. Perhaps even art that follows the music, much like visualizers in WinAmp, iTune etc.

Wouldn’t be hard to do. In fact, I think it is inevitable.