Digi pack panels

When we were set the task of producing album artwork for our band we had not yet filmed the music video. This meant that we were designing the artwork around the style of the band in order to conform to their star image. We began with agreeing upon an album title ‘Burn Out’ so that we could center the imagery on a theme.
In terms of music marketing I decided to make the images used quite bold so that it would appeal to our target audience who would be predominantly rock music fans. Stereotypically the imagery that is used for the word ‘burn’ would be flames, which is what I used for my artwork, conforming to the conventions of the rock genre.
Each genre of music has its own codes and conventions when it comes to album artwork. For example many pop albums will use bright colours and generally portraits of the artist on the front cover. In contrast, rock albums will tend to veer more towards using darker colours, bold imagery and ‘loud’ type font in order to give an idea of what kind of album it will be to the customer and appeal to their sense of style. The front cover I designed conforms to these forms and conventions of music marketing through artwork, along with the back cover.

For album designs it is not only the imagery that is important but also the font of the text used. A more relaxed genre of music such as soul or acoustic would tend to use a simple sans serif font, which would relate to the star image of the artist.
However, seeing as I was aiming to produce a rock album I decided to use a serif font, which I broke up to create a ‘cracked’ effect. This design of font was supposed to fit in with the whole ‘unstable’ and ‘damaged’ approach our band took towards their songs. Stereotypically rock band albums will use a serif font and be far more creative with the text design that is a convention which I conformed to.

By looking at an album by an established rock band allows you to compare and contrast the codes and conventions that I used when producing my own album art work. This album titled 'City of Vultures' by 'Rise to Remain' has used similar design conventions to mine.
The designer of the album has also decided to centre the artwork around the title of the album, picking out one word 'vultures' and using an image of a vulture on the front cover. The idea of one vulture tearing apart the body of another species of the same kind says a lot about the album. You can guess from the start that the genre of the music will be heavy, perhaps rock or metal. The imagery symbolises that everyone is out for themselves, no matter if your on the same team you will still turn against each other in the game of survival.
The text used on the front cover is custom made for the band which is another convention that I used for my album artwork. By doing this fans will familiarise themselves with that particular logo and link that font to the band every time they see it.