As it is the holidays, and my assignment is now finished I decided to take this time to write a less academic blog but which got me thinking about my previous CD artwork assignment and how I tried, and quite possibly failed, to be different.
Now, being fortunate (working for a street team) I have had the chance to meet one of my favourite bands (Hard-Fi) on numerous occasions throughout their careers and they are as a normal indie band who have been around a few years now and have got relatively successful on the indie scene as any other band in the genre.
Their debut album (Stars of CCTV) featured (as can be seen) a very simple cover. The CCTV camera reflected both the album name as well as accompanying some of the inner artwork (images from CCTV cameras). The impact that this cover had on people was immense. On numerous occasions I remember people seeing a CCTV warning sign placed somewhere and them shouting 'Hard-Fi'. Now yes this may be a little sad of people to do, but it worked. People remembered the artwork, the band and the album because of one simple picture.
This was perhaps helped by the promotion of the album with various stickers, posters, etc. all depicting the same image.
Anyone who has seen the infamous 'Embrace sticker pic' will no doubt realise what I mean.
As I said before, this album (and it's artwork) has made the band relatively successful, and with any successful debut album comes the rather dreaded and difficult second album. The 'make or break' album. This of course then includes the rather dreaded and difficult second album artwork.
With the thought of a new indie album coming out, the mind automatically springs to a moody looking band standing in front of a wall strewn with graffiti. But not Hard-Fi. No. They want to be 'different'.
With the new artwork they've tried to be clever, but have just come across as being pretentious. As one of my friends put it:
'This particular album art reminds me a little of the t-shirts currently on sale in TopShop, you know the ones "save the rave" etc. except with slogans such as "Make music, not bombs". Fair do's, you should make music and not bombs, but wearing a t-shirt made in China, that you bought from a high street chain store, printed in neon colours just makes you look like a prat instead of someone who is actually concerned about war.'
Personally I think that the whole idea of the album artwork looks like they are trying just too hard, and that the whole design will backfire on them. Yes the Beatles may have gotten away with it for their 'White Album' but they did this with Sgt. Pepper behind them. Not a CCTV camera.
From speaking to others about this topic they say it has actually deterred them from buying the album, despite them being fans of the band. Amazing how a CD cover can change peoples minds in such ways.
So this brings me back to my original point of the blog. My design for CD artwork and how I tried to be different.
With very little knowledge of who I was making the CD for, I went ahead and created some album art which was different to other electro/trance CD artwork I have seen. But was that the right choice? Did Pete Namlook and Pascal FEOS have enough credibility to break from the loop and do something different? Or would this have alienated both old, and new fans?
It is just another thing to add to the ever growing list of things to consider when designing something.
