Album Artwork- Research

Album Artwork is taken fairly seriously in the Indie Genre.  Album covers is another product for sale in the indie world. It Differs from other genres because these songs aren't generally sought after as much as other genres so they have a lower Digital Download rate than other genres. So to sell they make the album a product, an artefact that you cant get on digital download (sometimes digital download features album Artwork but its still not physical). Also there are now usually much more than the CD now in albums. There usually now is something inside with additional information, something which you cant get through digital downloads.  Even here there are different approaches to albums, some favour drawings or paintings as there album covers, some favour photographs but all follow a common theme in that they are in someway in an artistic form. Here are a few examples.

Kasabian-Empire

Radiohead- Ok Computer

Sonic Youth- Dirty



















For our song we plan to do Arctic Monkeys- I bet you look good on the dance floor. Here it is below.

It comes from the Album "Whatever people say I Am, Thats what I'm Not" which has taken the simple photo approach to it. I think that personally this we should do something similar to this in the photo approach for multiple reasons. Firstly it is in my mind tricky to create a CGI artwork with the software that has been made available to us. This would make for a very poor quality of the finished product and this is not what i want to happpen. Also I have little artistic talent so coming up with inspiration would be equally challenging. Below is the album in question.

The main features of this particular album is that it is a Single photo. The colour scheme is almost non existant an it is a cooler black and white, compared with other indie Albums (see example album covers near top) are much more vibrant and colourful. This is the style that i would consider using for my own album covers. I think I would choose this because It is simple to achieve because all we would have to do is find a Costume and take a series of pictures at differing angles and simply take the colour out of it.

Below are the other three albums that the Band have released.

Arctic Monkeys- Favorite Worst Nightmare

Arctic Monkeys- Humbug

Arctic Monkeys- Suck it And See

As we can see, the band has taken different approaches to there album styles. The second album they released "Favourite worst Nightmare" has in my opinion taken strong influence from 1960's bands like The Beatles in the Font for there band name and the style that are in the windows also pay homage to the 60's style. Amongst that they have combined that with a more convention Urban scene which once again is dark and Cold coloured. On contrast the 60's is very warm and colourful. There Third album "Humbug" has also taken a retro approach to there album cover. By the look of it it looks like an old photo. The Font has a 70s style to it and it looks almost degraded and rough. This was probably the desired effect but it certainly differs from the other album covers because it uses this style, the others don't have any connection to it. There Fourth album "Suck it and see" is definitely unique because it doesn't follow any Album cover Conventions. Firstly it has no visual art of any form and it dosnt feature the name of the Band anywhere. This isnt smething i would consider using because it is a little to simple and doesn't showcase any real creativity or thought (unless there was actually some underlying message in this). All of there albums are different from one another in almost every sense so this prompts that a Indie album cover isnt predictable or "conventional" so we could do almost anything and claim that it is their album. Well this only applies to the Specific band and may not nessecerily relate to every indie band but because we have to do one for Arctic Monkeys , it's still aplicable.