Album covers could be lost art

Cover of Jimi Hendrix Experience's Axis: Bold As Love

Before the emergence of digital music, album covers were an integral part of music buying.

As people thumbed through record racks, eye-catching album art could prove to be a deciding factor on whether people bought. The cover could convey something about the music inside or whether the act was creative or cool.

Jimi Hendrix's Axis: Bold as Love, Led Zepplin's Houses of the Holy, Peter Gabriel 3, The Rolling Stones Let It Bleed and The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band are just a few classic works.

But in the digital age, people hunt for music on computer screens, and an album cover is often reduced to a thumbnail print if it even accompanies the music at all. Wired.com has a couple of stories on how designers are trying to keep up with the changing times.

"We've been looking at a few technologies (for digital album art) and have been trying to bring these to Apple, to encourage them to bring that level of experience to the iPod," George White, Warner Music Group's senior VP of strategy and product development told Wired. "A very simple demonstration that we've done takes the Gnarls Barkley liner notes and does a fly-through (using Adobe Flash Lite). You're actually moving through the lyrics and artwork...It's really cool-looking on an iPod."

[paul.saulnier]

Not a lost art for me

Now that I have an iPod touch with a large crisp screen emphasizing album art, I've made a point to ensure the majority of my music has album art. It just looks so much better than the default pictures.

[Remo_Williams]

it's not lost, but it's been made retarded

i dunno about you, but my album covers were at least 12" square. plus, the fidelity of my album cover crushes your ipod touch. granted, i can't take my albums with me, but all you're getting is a thoroughly-diluted and bitter reminder of what used to constitute the experience of listening to an album.

package CDs in recycled cardboard with sleeves, jackets, and liner notes, and bring back artwork. i truly miss it.

[Rob Menke]

Sounds like ... a music video

How does an animated cover using Flash differ from a full-fledged
music video?

Color me paranoid, but it sounds more like Adobe using Warner as
a back-door to get Flash Lite onto the iPod/iPhone.

[Travis Ernst]

It is a lost art

The albums of today no longer have the enriched detail of art
the prior jackets had. Garcia's covers were true GEM's that must
have been drawn when on a "higher plane" to say it in an
attempt to avoid the post being cut. Journey had some great
covers as well.

U2 I think was creative and did a modern version and the cover
of the CD was a mix of pictures to create a larger picture on one
of their projects.

I miss the artistic drawings from the days before. It's sort of
back to the way music has become with "cookie cutter" covers
and "cookie cutter" music. It's all starting to blend into white
noise once again. We need some fresh blood (talent) to give it a
jump start.

[clfitz]

I agree with you, and I truly miss it...

I remember buying several copies of Led Zeppelin's "In Through the Out Door" just to get all four of the available covers. (For those who don't remember, the LPs were packaged in a brown paper bag.) I could go on: The working zipper on the Stones' album, Uriah Heep's Roger Dean cover art, etc. etc.

Plus, I checked a couple collector's sites a few years ago, and one of my unopened albums was (supposedly) selling for over $400.00 US, because of the cover.

[rodaniel]

CoverFlow

Actually, I would (and did) argue that Apple's CoverFlow UI found on the iPhone, Touch, and in the iTunes app may actually revitalize the importance of graphic design in music:

http://www.2dolphins.com/2007/10/art-that-flows.html

[piranha_face]

music industry aye?

It's led zeppElin...