A shortage of decent artist photos is not an excuse for your album cover to suck.
EDIT: In the interests of clarity, I selected the examples below on the basis that I believe them to not suck.
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SOME of those covers definitely suck, but I rather like the design of the Part and Reich covers, and even the Glass. I have to say, also, that the repertory and performers sell me way more than the covers. I do admit that the cover of the Robertson Davies Deptford Trilogy is what induced me to buy it knowing nothing whatsoever about the author – I’m now on my second copy of the trilogy, the first having come apart after being read and re-read over a period of 25 years.
I don’t think any of them suck. They’re all for different things. The Glass, for example, was made for a digital-only product and needed to be legible at 75 pixels square. The Arvo Pärt one is gorgeous on a matt o-card. The old-style DG cover was used on a digipack, and worked really well. The white ones look a bit silly on this blog. There may be such a thing as a surfeit of whitespace.
Oh, I MISREAD YOUR INTENTION. My error. The intent is “Your covers can look good even when you don’t have great artist photos.”
I must admit that I quite like some of these album covers.
Seriously, dear, who wants to look at pictures of Morton Feldman?
The Feldman ones are my favourites.
I have to say, these aren’t as bad and the bad/tasteless/clueless photo covers… Just sayin’
Actually I agree: They’re all pretty cool and far better than pretentious, stupid posing artists fotos (or Caspar David Friedrich pictures, if it is an album with german romantic music). Your comment though is mistakable: I first thought, you didn’t like these covers … I was just starting to think “What the he…”, when I saw your clarification in the comments.
Same here, I thought you were taking the mickey out of the covers.
Personally, I’m not very fond of the Jupiter one (although it makes perfect sense) and the Messiah.
Personally I can see the potential in these designs (they don’t suck), but if I were creating new editions I would tweak them at least a little. I’d look at ways to pay tribute to the classic edition (and, perhaps, communicate the idea of music as timeless) while adding just enough of a modern layer to get away from the “looks like something belonging to my grandmother” look.
I decided to do an example to show what I mean. I took the 3rd album cover and blended it with a stock image of ocean waves. Here is the result.
The image is low-quality, but only intended to be a proof-of-concept. The main concept being that I think one can improve the covers by adding a little more of a graphic element, but often a very subtle element is sufficient.
Re previous comment, I mean the 7th album cover, of course.
hello PD. Did I ever show you these vintage photo-free LP covers in my office? Next time you’re around have a closer inspection.
/large
Very few serious musicians are as beautiful as Myleene Klass and warrant being on an album cover 😉
There are some very lovely things there. Next time I come to your office, I’ll be sure to bring my Thomas Crown briefcase in order to steal them.