CD DESIGN RESEARCH Kayley Stanbridge
Contents of a CD Front Cover includes: Bands name Logo Album art work Parental Guidance logo Featured music.
The back cover includes: Track numbers song titles, including bonus tracks Barcode Record label logo, Record label address The record label copyright Additional record logos
Types of Album Artwork
The front cover of a CD is very important in respects Of how much a CD is bought. Designs influence buyers; Especially those unfamiliar with the artist or band’s cd They are looking at.
Minimalistic: The minimalistic theme is simplistic yet effective when laid out properly. These album covers tend to appeal more to purchasers, as their view eye is detracted by the space surrounding the image, as the eye is drawn to open areas.
Portrait: Portrait photography is mainly used for solo artists as it just shows a close up of the solo artists face. A powerful photograph could be all it takes to increase an albums amount of sales
Photo manipulations: Photo Manipulations are a great way to make an album stand out
Vector Arts: Vector art is clean, elegant and the amounts of effects are completely endless. No two things are ever the same
Digital: Digital artwork is a great way to aim artwork at a younger, more modern generation. It’s a great way to increase sales if the album is aimed at a particular market
Type Based: Just like the image-based album trend, powerful typography can sometimes be enough all by itself.
Hand drawn: Hand-drawn CD cover art is one of the biggest design trends of the year; not only in album artwork but in web design and other graphic design projects, too
Black And White: Black and White images are often linked with these two words: ‘Elegant’ and ‘Beautiful’
Album artwork I like
This is a CD by Kanye west and Jay z. What I like most about this design is its gold colour, intricate designs/patterns and its simplicity
This is Mylo xyloto by Coldplay. What I like about this design is its bright colouring and simple text. The background image is Very stand out worthy and
A CD by XX. Simple. Effective
The bright complementary colours and merged animal heads work well with the title ‘Native’ of this One Republic album
Chosen genre/design type As I have decided to design a Cd cover and show different experimentations of designs in preparation for the exam, I underwent this research in the different types of designs of CDs and the different genres to decide what I will be trying to create. I have decided that I will be creating minimalistic designs within my experiments and later exam outcome. I will be looking at artwork such as that seen from XX and Coldplay and One republic when creating my designs. Furthermore, I have decided that the chosen genre for this CD will be indie/rock.