By Milli Berman

TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF ALBUM COVERS

ALBUM COVER 1 – SOME NIGHTS FUN (FRONT)

ANALYSIS• For my first album cover textual analysis I’ve decided to use this album cover by fun.

• This cover is quite a simple design, only using some bold text, a photograph and a cream coloured border. The band came to the decision to use the stand-alone picture by itself to establish the album as a whole by one image that can explain it’s premise without needing to use words, displaying what could be a typical night for many teenagers throughout the world. It’s not immediately clear what is going on in the image and requires a certain amount of observation and thought to understand what is happening. They use the entire image to convey the brand and meaning intended to avoid tarnishing or misrepresenting the image.

• The text is used in bold to stand out so people understand the album’s name and how it co-responds to the cover image used.

• The cream coloured compliments the image and text with successful simplicty and doesn’t distract the viewer from neither the text nor image.

ALBUM COVER 1 – SOME NIGHTS FUN (BACK)

ANALYSIS• For the back cover of this album they have kept the same theme of simplicity as they had

used in the front cover, only involving text and no images (Apart from company logos of course)

• They have used the same font as they used in the front cover to establish their own font that the audience will associate with the band.

• It has the track listing located in the middle of the cover, exactly where the image art was used on the front cover to draw the audience eye to the same location it would be on either side of the album box. It is aligned in an equal amount space with the same font used as the titles, just un-bolded.

• The titles also align with one another in the same pattern that the track-list does to establish a recurrent pattern

• Underneath all this is the company trademarks/logos and barcode which are also aligned in the middle of the cover to make everything neat and fit well with one another.

ALBUM COVER #2 – MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE BLACK PARADE

ANALYSIS• This album cover is far less abstract than the previous one I analyzed since you are immediately

given a genre and build up an expectation of what type of music the album will consist of due to the use of text and image.

• The font used is an iconic style of how the band writes their name, it is done in a white paint-like texture with a lot of harsh jagged lines like it’s been scratched into the cover which shows it is either a rock or metal genre of album

• The album cover is an illustrative cover since it uses a piece of artwork as it’s cover image rather than a piece of photography. The artwork is of a skeleton dressed in the band’s iconic costume. Using the costume is a key usage of star construction and it goes beyond a generic use of the band wearing the it and have instead drawn it onto a 2D character to add more meaning and depth to the cover

• In the bottom left corner there is a parental advisory sticker added to show that there is explicit lyrics within the bands music, typically the only type of music that involves these warnings are; rock/metal and rap

• In the bottom right cover it has another sticker showing that includes the bands main song that the album is named after is included in the disc. This is intended to exist the audience and feel closer to the band since they will of already seen the music video if they’re a fan.

• The background on the album is black and has a scratchy texture added onto it to give it a rough type of feeling to fit into the rock genre conventions.

ALBUM COVER 2 – MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE BLACK PARADE (BACK)

ANALYSIS• For the back cover, there seems to be a lot more going on than there is on the front and is far more

complex than the previous album I analyzed.

• It has kept the same black-scratchy textured background that was seen used on the front cover and also includes another piece of artwork drawn in the same style as the skeleton of the front. This time it depicts another skeleton with arrows going through its body and It also shows that the iconic hat is on the ground with an arrow in it too. It demonstrates the darkness within the album portrayed in a physical artistic representation.

• The track-list is framed in a white multi-boarded box following the symmetrical pattern that was used in the last cover I analyzed with. The fonts used in this list differ between bold and thin lines but follow the same style and colour. The use of multiple types of font show the rebelliousness that the album portrays through it’s music.

• Underneath the track-list you can again see the barcode and copyright/trademark information portrayed in a smaller but still fitting font in white as well so it still fits in with the albums over-all image.

• You can also see the spine in the image which uses the album’s name in the familiar font used going down the side of the cover.

ALBUM COVER 3 – FOUR BLOC PARTY (FRONT)

ANALYSIS• For this album cover there isn’t an incredibly amount that can be said or analyzed about it

since it’s obvious the band has decided to make an extremely simplistic for their design.

• The have used a series on consecutive circles within each other, all being a different colour of each primary colour plus green. Each circle gets smaller as it fits into the next one.

• The bands name is placed within the middle of the circle in a simple full capitalized grey font.

• This is all done on a black background to make your focus be primarily only on the circles and the album/band names.

ALBUM COVER 3 – FOUR BLOC PARTY (BACK)

ANALYSIS• Like the front cover, the back is as simple in design as well. The track-list is displayed in

the top left corner and just displays the tracks and are not even labeled with numbers, just simply their titles.

• You can see the spine of the cover simple says the album name in the recurrent font used throughout the front and back cover

• Through a large gap, at the bottom of the cover you can see the barcode and copyright/trademark information goes across the bottom of the back cover also displaying a company logo giving the only colour at all on the back.