Album Cover Research

As well as our music video, for our coursework we must produce a digi-pack and a poster advertising the album. We have conducted individual research on album covers, digi-packs and posters and will collect our findings later, in a separate combined post.

As we have used one of her songs, Caro is the most important influence on our digipack. Her trade mark combination (or a variation of that theme) of bright colour filters over a black and white photo is present in most of her covers although, there are some (anomalies).  Another convention of hers is the text: Her name is in  the same font all the time, but in different colours, to tie in with the colour scheme for that specific album cover.  This technique of a constant style of writing is common to all artist's and acts as a logo or like an autograph for the artist's 'brand'. 

This is the album cover that includes 'That Man'

Her albums are released as

 records as well as  CD's to

reinforce the vintage style.

The photo for 'Riviera Life' is quite controversial in today's media, but it would have been considered acceptable, even 'glamorous' to show the singer smoking on the cover in the era the music is set. I think this is why she has chosen to be photographed in this way, because it is authentic to the era of the music. The divide between block colour and a black and white photo looks 'retro' and modern at the same time.

This is the simplest cover and probably my favourite.  The photo of her is tinted with the yellow of the background, as if its warmth has radiated through her. The direction of the text is mirroring her position, creating a linear strip of  features and leaving the two outside 3rds in negative space. She is also standing in a very confident pose, showing off her curves. This presents a very bold, exotic and striking image. 

'Stuck' is quite different to her other covers as it does not use the black and white photo with bright coloured filters convention that seems to define her style.  It is still recognisable as a Caro album due to the two text conventions across all the covers. The style of photo is reminisint of 40's/50's airbrushing in advert posters. This is a style we would like to try in our design.

Before we chose That Man, we were seriously considering using a 'P!nk' song. So, even though her genre of music is completely different to Caro's, her covers are really interesting and original to look at and learn from. Her album covers reflect the confrontational, yet comical nature of her videos.

This cover in particular caught our attention right at the start of this project. The images surrounding her are common tattoo images which reinforces the rebellious, individual style of P!nk's music and 'look'. The strong reds and pinks contrast with the faded pale cream colour of the background, making the whole effect very striking and eye - catching. 

P!nk's name logo reflects her music style. The exclamation mark instead of the 'i' reflects the iconic and  confrontational genre. Although the cover does not link with the video, the background colours of a mustard yellow and ... pink match with the colours of her costume. She also seems to have an established facial expression of half smiling, half smiling which she uses on the most of her album covers. 

The presentation of female artists is very important as they are often seen as role models by the younger audience members. There are many different portrayals of the female gender in the music industry. These are the main groups I have noticed from my research:

- beautiful / aimed at young girls - aspirational. For example, Taylor Swift in 'Mean'.

- beautiful / aimed at women - aspirational. For example, Corrine Bailey Rae in 'Like a Star'

- sexy / aimed at women - powerful and aspirational. For example, the artist Beyonce in 'Ring on it'

- sexy aimed at men - as an object of desire. For example, Britney Spears in 'Hit me Baby'

- individual or rebellious / aimed at young girl and women - aspirational. For example, P!nk in 'raise your glass'

Most of Taylor Swift's album covers follow the convention of many current popular female singers.   A mid shot of the artist, heavily made up, airbrushed and in a glamourous dress. (wind machines also seem to be very popular!)                         

The top two examples here show this trend. 

However, some of her covers show more creativity and innovation.  For example, the covers for 'Love Story' and 'Mean' link the album cover to the video explicitly. This is achieved by the artist being in the same (main) costume as in the video, the images on the cover link clearly to the title of the song and ... 

This is my favourite Swift cover as it incorporates links to the video, humour and detailed character design into one image. The over-the-top facial expressions instantly tell the audience the scene is imitating silent films, even if the monochrome colour scheme and 20's style costumes don't. The 'evil' character has an oversized, almost cartoon-like moustache as this has connotations with evil from many films and other media products. 

Imelda May is an artist of a similar genre to Caro, but her sound is a lot harsher, more rock and roll. The importance of her highly stylised look and music is similar to Caro's.

This pop-art style album cover picks out the iconic features of her 'look': black eye-liner, hoop eye-rings, red lips and bleached swirl of hair.

The back of the album is completely different, yet by using conventions from the front cover, like the font used for the album title and the tattered border (making the new product look aged), still manages to link back and front together, and not look disjointed. 

This cover is for a different album and it is still recogniseable to be by Imelda May because of her conventions: her name is in the same font with the little star (but in a different colour scheme) and she is made up in her signature look (but the photo is in a tinted black and white). The location of the photo links her music to the 1950's. 

The wall she is standing in front of is very popular decor for 40's/50's restaurants and cafes. The wall is plastered in old movie, gig posters and vintage photos like a massive collage. This is technique we would like to incorporate into our digi pack.

Elbow was the main male artists I looked at and it is interesting to see how different their covers are to female artists. Obviously, some 'boy bands' do not follow this convention, but the majority of male artists are not constantly on their covers. They are more likely to have and illustration, pattern or model on the front. These covers show the consistency of this trend with Elbow...

We will also be influenced in our designs by real record sleeves as we would like to link album cover to the era and style of music as the two artsits we have been researching have. 

From this research I have learnt:

• The name of the artist is treated almost like a logo, to have one element of continuity over the different albums. e.g. P!NK 
• mainstream female artists often just have covers with an image of them medium shot, (usually with a wind machine) of them looking as beutiful as possible. Their face is used as the logo. We will try to avoid this trend in our design.
• Including the costume, scene or colour scheme from the video helps to link both products together.
• The minimal amount of text on the front cover is the name of the artist and the title of the album.

Representation of Women in the Music Video

As our singer was female, we felt very strongly that we wanted to portray a positive image of women in our video. This meant rejecting many conventions of modern female artists. 

In many films of the 50's, the
actress was merely there to be
 beautiful and rarely had any
depth of character.

The most common is giving priority to the artist's beauty above anything else in the video. E.g. every macro and micro element is used to make the artist look beautiful or sexy. Interestingly, a convention not widely used by male artists. This convention is also true of album covers. 
(see Album Cover Research post for more detailed discussion)
We could have followed this convention and still stayed true to the era we were setting it in. Many films of this age show women as glamorous, unruffled 'goddesses', serene but with limited personalities. However this was not the image of women we wanted to portray.

We wanted our character 'Caro' to be fun, flirty and silly. She could be beautifully made up as a 50's star, but she didn't stay perfectly still so as not to disturb her hair-do! To achieve this 'fun' character we cast a girl who is naturally funny, willing to be a bit ungraceful in order to get a laugh, but could also show a glamorous side for the performance sections. Another reason we cast Ashlea as Caro was her amazing figure. Just as a stick thin figure is supposedly popular in today's society, curves were coveted in the 50's.

 

Christina Hendricks played Joan Holloway 

in Mad Men and was part of the re-

popularisation of the curvy figure - with
the success of the show she stayed

true to her natural shape  

Caro's audience is wide ranging. The 15 year old trumpet player in our video is a huge fan, as is my Grandma! So we realised we had an obligation to the younger audience to support a positive image of women of normal size. 

As we set our video in an era when women's lives were very domesticated, we rejected representing our character in the way that would have been the social norm at that time. For example, waiting for the man to come to her. In our video, she 'goes after' him first and has the confidence to 'play hard to get'. 

We carried out independent and collaborative research on 50's adverts and record covers. The main images relating to women that kept occurring were: make up, new types of stockings and new kitchen appliances and inventions.  So, when exploring ideas for our digi pack and magazine advert, the idea of super-imposing our Caro onto an image of a 50's kitchen (connecting our Caro with an authentic original advert from the 1950's) came up. This was a good idea in terms of linking her to the era we had used for the video, however it also showed our strong, independent and often cheeky female character to be only identified by her sparkly, 50's, domestic, setting, like most women of that time. We wanted her strong character to be the thing that 'sold' the music instead of  imitating authentic adverts as a gimmick. 
(To give you an idea of the position of the 1950's housewife that we do NOT want to promote, the link below shows you the Rules for married women, compiled in a book called The Good Housewife's Guide!)

1955 good housewife's guide

The high speed chase was inspired by Benny Hill, a 1970'scomedian, who is famous for these sped up chases, and also for sexism in his shows. I believe that our version, even though it still shows the man chasing the woman, is not sexist because it is more innocent and light hearted and because our lady is wearing considerably more costume than the women in Benny Hill's chases! 

It was important to us to keep the make up and costume faithful to the era. We wanted to reject the clichéd dolly bird character of the 50's films but not deny her femininity. We did this by making detailed designs of her costume and make up and buying costumes as close as possible to the actual designs. Also, we used extreme close up shots of the character applying make up which placed more importance on these feminine actions. Make up was very important to women in the 1950's. There was an established 'look' that every woman aspired to, polished and un-ruffled. Perfection.  This 'look' was desired in every part of a middle class woman's life: her appearance, her house and especially her kitchen. We have used the 'perfect appearance' from this stereotype and rejected  the other two as they are synonymous with the housewife image which we did not want to represent. 

We wanted to carry this 'fun' image of women over to the digi pack and magazine advert to keep our representation consistent.  For example:

This is the image we used for the
magazine advert. The audience
can see she is having fun and not
taking herself too seriously. While
still looking polished and perfect!

This was a rejected image as the pose
 is static and no strong emotions show.
Almost doll-like.