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November 17, 2005
To Design or Not To Design - That is the Question
What is the value of design? How important is design in terms of marketing a.k.a in terms of dollars and cents? Design can be tangible or intangible - you can look at it or you can touch it. In the case of music cd cover design, you can "listen" to it, so to speak, because a look can be a motivator and entice someone to take an action i.e. buy a music album, or listen to a music cd, or attend a band’s music concert via the mediums of cover design, poster design, website design, and other forms of promotional collateral.
You don't have to be a graphic designer to understand the value of design- just take the following companies as a few examples: Nike, Apple, Target, McDonalds, MTV, and United Airlines. What all these companies have in common is that they recognize the value of design and they know how to use art as vehicle to produce sales.
Which brings us to the point of this article: do you think they just hand off art direction or graphic design responsibilities to their sales or accounting department? The answer is no - they understand that it takes professional artist to operate the medium of design. Now this doesn't go to say that you need be a huge corporation to utilize design. Design comes in many sizes, and can accommodate any budget from children working a lemonade stand to Bill Gate's working Microsoft. When applying this understanding to music, why would one spend so much time toiling over the way the music sounds just to sabotage all their hard work in the end by giving their album packaging no consideration, or by delegating the job to untrained relatives with a computer, or attempting to do it themselves having no artistic training? The reasoning is lopsided and a degenerate approach to the sum of the work done. Let us not work towards a music industry of unattractive visuals but towards one where there is equal thought placed on the look of an album cover as there is on the sound of the music. Professional designers are trained to help individuals translate their thoughts, emotions, words, and sounds into the global language that is design.
Todays designers are in a sense yesterdays Rembrants, DaVincis, and Michelangelos. Their art was also commissioned for then commercial reasons. In conclusion - don't do it, leave it to the pros.
cd cover design cd design cddesign coverart
November 10, 2005
Cover Art Plugin for iTunes Windows
Publisher's Description:
Download album art for all iTunes tracks, view all your albums in a visual display sorted by artist and album, and resize art up to 300x300. Advanced code circumvents server errors from nonstandard text in album-artist names when downloading Album Art. Advanced code is able to manage international character sets when attaching covers to iTunes. Click an album cover to play a song, sync individual album covers to iTunes, sync all your album covers to all tracks in iTunes with one click, perform extended searches on rare albums with up to 100 hits per album, and change album art easily.
Version 1.5 fixes unspecified errors with international character sets when attaching covers and increases Album Cover Art downloads in the trial version to 30 covers plus seven deep Search covers.
End of Publisher's Description.
A similar product called CoverBuddy is available for iTunes Mac.
EyeJamz sells for $11.99 (trial version available)
cd cover design cd design cddesign coverart iTunes album art
November 04, 2005
CD Design - Lawyers and Promotion
The cd cover design of Texas punk band FemixTX's upcoming live album, "Purple Reign and Blood" has been nixed. Lawyers for Prince stepped in and applied pressure, apparently forcing the band to change the cover design - for fairly obvious reasons. The cd is set for November 8 release.
As they say, there's no such thing as bad promotion.
cd cover design cd design cddesign coverart
November 02, 2005
Grammy Award Winning Album Cover Design: The 80s
On to the 80s cover designs we go...
Some highlights (for those of us who remember that decade) - The Cold War ended, the compact disc was born, Disco was out, Punk and New Wave were in, and hairdos reached towards the sky. The Atari 2600 and Intellivision videogame consoles peaked then crashed. MTV, CNN and cable television started making their way across the country.
OK... enough reminiscing. The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (aka Grammys) gave their awards for Best Recording Package Design during those years too. Here they are:
1980
Mick Haggerty & Mike Doud (art directors) for Breakfast in America performed by Supertramp
1981
Roy Kohara (art director) for Against the Wind performed by Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band
1982
Peter Corriston (art director) for Tattoo You performed by The Rolling Stones
1983
John Kosh & Ron Larson (art directors) for Get Closer performed by Linda Ronstadt
1984
Robert Rauschenberg (art director) for Speaking in Tongues performed by Talking Heads
1985
Janet Perr (art director) for She's So Unusual performed by Cyndi Lauper
1986
John Kosh & Ron Larson (art directors) for Lush Life performed by Linda Ronstadt
1987
Eiko Ishioka (art director) for Tutu performed by Miles Davis
1988
Bill Johnson (art director) for King's Record Shop performed by Rosanne Cash
1989
Bill Johnson (art director) for Tired of Runnin' performed by O'Kanes
cd cover design album covers cddesign Grammy 1980s
November 01, 2005
Grammy Award-Winning Album Cover Design: The 70s
In 1959, the Grammy Awards began presenting an award for Best Album Cover, recognizing the growing artistry of the 'face' of recorded music releases. In 1974 the award was renamed Best Recording Package design.
In this first installment are the winners from the 1970s. So here they are, the best album cover designs of the 70s, according to The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.
1971 - David Stahlberg & Evelyn J. Kelbish (graphic artists) for America the Beautiful performed by Gary McFarland
1972 - Robert Lockart (graphic artist) & Ivan Nagy (photographer) for Indianola Mississippi Seeds performed by B.B. King
1973 - Acy R. Lehman (art director) & Harvey Dinnerstein (graphic artist) for The Siegel-Schwall Band performed by the Siegel-Schwall Band
1974 - Wilkes & Braun (art director) for Tommy performed by the London Symphony Orchestra & Choir
1975 - Christopher Whorf & Ed Thrasher (art directors) for Come and Gone performed by Mason Proffit
1976 - Jim Ladwig (art director) for Honey performed by the Ohio Players
1977 - John Berg (art director) for Chicago X performed by Chicago
1978 - John Kosh (art director) for Simple Dreams performed by Linda Ronstadt
1979 - Johnny B. Lee & Tony Lane (art directors) for Boys in the Trees performed by Carly Simon
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