Album Cover Research

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Legend: The Best of Bob Marley and the Wailers

This album cover is a simple close-up, high focus portrait of Bob Marley. The album cover is effective as it is very simple and yet professional. There are two main parts to this album cover, the picture and the title. The image is of the artist himself showing the emotion as if he is "reflecting" upon his life which links to the fact that this album came out 3 years after Bob Marley's death, hence it will provoke the audience to reflect and remember Bob Marley. The "lion" logo is also has a straight connection to the religion of himself and his colleagues as being "Rastafarian". The choice of colour for the text on the album cover is gold, referring to a quite vintage and grand background showing that this album was intended to look "upper-class".

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Everything EP

This album cover is a fairly complicated concept album cover. This album cover features a picture outlined by a circle to suit a 12" record sleeve. The colourfulness of the EP cover reflects the "emotive" nature of "xxxy" music. The artwork on this album cover reflects and blends not only the past but also the present. The album cover actually shows a poorly made  picture involving many different colours and "swirled" with the artists name simply printed on the top of it to make it distinguishable, such a picture is made with the intent to be "trippy" as this relates to the music. bright colours are used on this album cover with the intention to make it stand out and be eye-catching towards it's audience.

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"Straight Outta Compton"

This album cover shows a "low view shot", I believe this is done to make it seem as if the 6 members of N.W.A to have a lot of power over the audience or whoever views the album cover. Also the 6 members of N.W.A are in focus however the building in the background is fairly blurred meaning the photographer used a small aperture around F12 to capture this picture. The use of colour in this album cover is also interesting as the colour is true however it looks as if the colour may have been filtered a bit to make it look smoother or the picture may have been taken on a vintage style camera.

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Tenacious D

This album cover uses black and white colour with a bit of pink to make a certain part stand out. I believe they use a black and white colour filter to signify the darkness and the "creepy" side of rock when the devil is involved. By looking at the floor we can see 3 candles which should create more light than the amount that is in the photo, therefore the photographer could have used a low aperture (below F18), a low ISO or a low exposure to capture the image the way they have. Also the three characters in the cover are all in focus however the background (floor) is blurred showing the photographer must have used a lower aperture when capturing this photo.

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Dark Side Of The Moon

This album cover is considered to be one of the most iconic album covers of all time, and has spawned a mass of fan-created replicas.
The simple yet so smart idea of showing a beam of light travelling through a prism to be refracted into the 6 colours of the spectrum proved to be a very eye-catching album cover and even though many people may not know the album's artist "Pink Floyd" It is almost certain that they will have seen this picture or a reference to it in their lifetimes. The black background also makes the prism and light stand out due to the contrast. Hipgnosis and George Hardie made the original album artwork for Pink Floyd.