Album Art and CD Cover Design

The Simpsons Spawn Worst Album Cover Hoax

Perhaps you've seen this album art while browsing the internets. It quietly makes all the worst album art lists out there. But in a shocking new report, gawker.com exposes the truth and the fraud behind this piece o fart. Wait until you hear the connection with The Simpsons. Go now.

80s Rock Album Cover Art Quiz

The Columbus Dispatch has posted an album art quiz. In their Jacket Jumble, the band names and titles have been removed. How many covers you can identify? Lots of hints are given, answers are at the bottom of the page. Check it out the Jacket Jumble

Flip Though Album Covers on Blackberry and Windows Mobile Smartphones

Looking for that iPhone-like interface for your Blackberry or Windows Mobile phone. FlipSide turns your smartphone into your favorite MP3 player allowing you to visually "swoosh" through music quickly and easily. Scroll though album covers or flick through them with your finger.

FlipSide downloads and displays the cover art of each album and even links to FlipSide Extras to provide biographies of the artists, recommendations for similar artists and more.

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FlipSide retails for $19.95 and a free trial download is available now from the FlipSide website.

album art Blackberry Windows mobile

Discarded Album Art Concept: Pink Floyd Animals

Storm Thorgerson, one of the greatest album cover designers of all time, originally created this sketch for the cover of Pink Floyd's Animals (1977):

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It's hard to imagine that (or anything) replacing the final, iconic cover of the factory and flying pig.

In July, the Oxo gallery in London will be exhibiting Mr. Thorgerson's works in a retrospective entitled Mind Over Matter: Images of Pink Floyd. More info here

Thanks to Times Online

Weezer Album Art

I suppose there's something to be said for consistency, but I'm not sure what it is. Weezer's self-titled release comes out in June in both US and UK.

more about Weezer

300,000 LP Albums and Covers Recycled into Art

Vinylux transforms vintage LPs and Album Covers into a variety of gift items - coasters, bowls, clocks, trays, ornaments, notecards, sketchbooks etc. Artist Jeff Davis estimates he will recycle 150,000 LPs and 45s in 2008 alone. What started as his design school master's thesis project turned into a full time business.

Visit Vinylux.net

album art

Cover Styles of the Young and Naked - A Warning!

Naked children and album covers do not mix! Don't let it happen to your son or daughter.

CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE

The real story of the naked kid on Nirvana Nevermind - [VH1.com]
Whatever happened to the naked kids on Led Zeppelin Houses of the Holy - [dailymail.co.uk]
The real story behind the naked girl holding a spaceship on Blind Faith's self titled album - [bobseidemann.com, photographer].

Photographer Bob Seidemann was hired for the cover design of Eric Clapton's new band in 1969. He titled his striking image of innocence meets human achievement Blind Faith. The name stuck for the group. The album art was changed (to a band picture) for the US release, but album art censorship is nothing new.

Clown are Scary, Even on LP Album Covers

There are two types of people in the world: those freaked out by clowns, and those who mock us. Perhaps by posting these old LP album covers I can begin to exercise the fears. So here they are - 4 freaky clown covers from the past. Their smiles are hiding all that big top evilness... and they're watching me... I just know they are.

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source: LP Cover Lover

Beatles Album Covers Lego'd

Seven famous Beatles album covers recreated - Lego style.

See them all: Bootlego Beatles

Pink Floyd Box Set Interactive Promotion

A great interactive promotion for Pink Floyd's 14 cd box set. The packaging is demonstrated nicely. One by one, each disc rises out from the box, leading to a jukebox style browser of each album cover and sample track. You can flip the cover art around to see the art on the back and the track listings. Arrows appear to let you browse forward and back chronologically through each release of the box set. The iconic prism-separated light streams pulsate with each sample track.

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The screenshots really don't capture the coolness. Check it out: Pink Floyd Box Set Promotion

Album Cover Art Downloader for Linux

Here's a program for Linux that adds album art to your music library. It searches Amazon, Yahoo! Images, Wal-Mart and Buy.com to find cover designs for your music collection. It can automatically make decisions or you can review the covers manually before accepting them.

]]> There's a quickstart guide that shows how to get started. Here's a description from the developer's site:

All you have to do is point it at the root of your music directory and for each directory, the program will download a set of corresponding (well, best guess) album covers from the Internet, from which you can choose one that suits your fancy.

Source: Album Cover Art Downloader for Linux | via linux.com feature

album art

Design Goodie: 11 Free Vectors - Japanese Themed Freebies

11 awesome, highly detailed free vectors with a Japanese theme - there's a dojo, latern, buddha statue, tower roof, street signs, and a few palaces of Japan. They're free and downloadable at keepdesigning.com.

Check out all the thumbnail screens after the jump.

]]> The final EPS downloads have much more detail than can be seen here. Visit the download page for free vectors.

All images used with permission of the designer.

Be the Cover Art at Sleeveface

I just discovered Sleeveface, where lp album covers merge with reality. Visit the flickr pool or the website. A 3 minute film short is also in the works.

HISTORY OF SLEEVEFACE (from flickr pool discussion)
Carl Morris placed an old album cover of McCartney II over his face while djing in Cardiff, England. The crowd went wild. It caught on with other DJs who then did the same.

then a few folks opened up a Facebook group, and photo'd themselves a la Sleeveface and well, it's history.

definition: SLEEVEFACE: " one or more persons obscuring or augmenting any part of their boyd or bodies with record sleeves causing an illusion." according to Carl Morris.

2 Dashboard Widgets for Finding Missing Album Art

Hands-on with two Dashboard widgets for iTunes: Amazon Album Art and Album Art Widget. Both can search for and add missing cover art to your iTunes library.

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Amazon Album Art

HOW IT WORKS: Type in an artist or title and click the button to search Amazon sites. Click the thumbnails button to review all the search results. When you like what you see, click the "Set as album art in iTunes" button. But BE CAREFUL.The default setting is to operate on the selected (highlighted) track in iTunes, which might not be what you're currently listening to. That makes it easy to accidentally apply the art to the wrong album! Unfortunately, I'm speaking from experience here :( I'd recommend changing the preferences to "operate on the current album" if you plan to use it while listening to your iTunes library. Clicking on the cover art itself takes you to the album's page at Amazon.com. NOTE: iTunes must be running before you can apply any artwork.

Another preference allows you to choose between searching Amazon's "Popular Music" or "Classical Music" sections. In addition, you can specify an international Amazon site search: (.at, .ca, .co.jp, .co.uk, .de, .fr).

OPINION: Works well as a handy Dashboard widget for quickly searching the various Amazon sites for missing album art. It functioned fine on my laptop running Tiger OS. Just make sure you apply the cover to the right album - check those preferences! The widget does appear to select the largest size available at Amazon, but it would be nice to see pixel dimensions of the search results.

free download page | developer site

Album Art Widget

HOW IT WORKS: Displays cover of the currently playing track. If none is available it can be set to auto-search from various Amazon sites, Google images or yesasia. If you like what it finds, click the "Add artwork to iTunes song" button. Doing so brings up 3 button options: 1-save to song only, 2-save to all songs in the album, and 3-cancel. In addition to the album art features, the widget also lets you rate the currently playing song, displays album tracks (did not work for me), can show you the source page for the searched cover image.

OPINION: Worked well for me, but the cover display is pretty small and the image seemed overly blurred. The ability to rate songs is nice, this widget certainly has more functionality than the Amazon one. Unfortunately the track listing feature didn't work for me.

free download page | developer site

If you're a real widget lover, one of these may be for you. However, broader searches and more options are available with other album art software programs.

Panic at the Disco Album Cover - Pretty. Odd.

Available March 25 - Panic at the Disco - Pretty. Odd.

CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE