The Iconography of the album cover

The art of the album cover includes part packaging, part advertising, and most art covers allows us to have an insight into the artists view. The best album cover art illustrates the music and links to the lyrics in a way that creates the whole product. Julian house speaks about how most of the direction for the album must be taken from the artists and this usually involves sit down discussions where the artist gives ideas, then the create people go off and present visuals. House also explains how the album sleeve is an entry point into the universe that the music is in. Special packaging with art on sells well to a specific audience. Although most music is consumed virtually, there is still a large amount of people who collect art albums which is a market niche.

Album cover art can be extremely varied utilising photos, graphics, typography or any combination of these. As a type of media text, it can be de-constructed like any other. When analysing it, we  can use the same tools we'd use to analyse and understand any media text.

It is important to think about who the audience is for any given text and how they respond to it. Album covers are made to essentially promote the album, they are made to be eye catching and intriguing and to tell us something about the artist who made the album. Artwork on an album cover is likely to attract a wider audience than it would have done previously as it will sell to more music fans in general and not only their existing fan-base. Album covers may denote or connote the meaning behind the album and the lyrics to the songs depending on the image. A sign is a representation that refers to something else and has meaning. A code means the structure of how signs are organised into systems to make meaning. They are usually divided into the technical and the symbolic, there are also written codes that included the use of language and text layout.

Composition and framing focuses on the construction of the album cover. The composition and framing considers how the light, shadow and colour contribute to the image of the album cover. We refer to conventions as established ways of doing things, for example established forms of presenting and image. It can be helpful to examine how closely any given image tracks the conventions you'd associate with it, for example a post hardcore album sleeve might conventionally use horror imagery such as skull and cross bones with dark colours.