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Four equally dire Mozart covers
Don't even get me started on the many problems I have with this album cover:
Mozart for your baby. Indeed.
Perhaps it's simply that the record companies want to keep the album art 'refined' and 'sophisticated' in order to differentiate it from the other music found on the shelves of record shops, or increasingly on the pages of internet shops like Amazon. Just glancing at the covers, you can instantly tell that these are classical albums; they're certainly not rock, dance, pop music, or anything else. However, album covers that are trying to look too sophisticated and pretentious run the risk of deterring new listeners. I don't know anybody my own age would even consider buying a classical album, yet I'm willing to bet that it's not because of the music itself, it's because the packaging makes it look like you're only supposed to purchase it if you're past retirement age.
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Four Chopin album covers
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Classical compilation albums are no better in terms of design
Upon seeing all these vexatious examples of bad design, I soon found myself eagerly trying to search out some examples of good classical album covers. I found a very interesting Flickr set full of classical music albums, all on vinyl, from the 1950s. The covers are full of bold colours and shapes, and some delightful illustrations which really sum up the style of design at the time. It's very far removed from the kind of illustrations we are used to seeing on album covers today.
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Vinyl covers from the 50s
So if classical albums came with good design in the 50s, at what point did it all start to go wrong? I took Gustav Holst's 'The Planets' as an example, and started looking at how the album covers have changed over the last half a century.
1950s
 1960s |  1970s |
 1990s |  2000s |
In my opinion the 50s is still the best example, but the one that intrigues me the most is the one from the 70s. Even if it's not a great album cover, it's great to see at least one example that steers clear of the all too obvious pictures of planets, and instead tries to approach the subject of outer-space and otherworldliness from a different angle.
Finally, I did manage to find one example of a classical music album that I thought had a great design. Die Götterdämmerung (The Twilight of the Gods), part of Wagner's opera, which culminates with the apocalyptical ending of the earth by raging fires and then floods, which wipe out both human civilization and the Gods. It would have been all too easy for the designer to simply place a picture of fire, destruction, Gods, or similar imagery on the front, but instead they went for a clean layout with a good visual hierarchy, a clever image, and some good typography to match (the only negative aspect is the record company's insistence on putting their logo in the corner). I'd like to see more covers like this, and fewer pictures of dusty old composers and their violins.
Die Götterdämmerung
For further examples of good, bad, and some slightly ridiculous classical album art, see these articles on the allmusic blog and the Too Many Tristans blog.
2 comments:
Interesting article.
As you sussed out, album artwork has retained its designs and not progressed excessively...you compared it to the current array of music on our shelves.
The fundamental factor you may have overlooked is that the likes of Chopin won't be releasing a new hit anytime soon and the necessity to rebrand it isn't in the music companies best financial interest.
Also there stands the question, is there a certain amount of pretension attached? If the music is appreciated for what it is alone, a snazzy cd cover is redundant; it would only exist for the user, to look good on their shelf which in itself contradicts the message.
I do agree to an extent, if the same album was duplicated, two copies, one an outdated design, the other a modern design, same price, I would opt to purchase the modern...however I doubt that this would be the case, the modern revamped version would more often than not be a higher priced purchase for the consumer.
Great article.
I think the need to rebrand classical music is necessery and that the appauling designs used on the majority of classic music CDs is doing no favours. Also, just because the fabric of Holtz and Chopin won't change the sounds certainly do. The London Philamonic will play Jupitar very differently to the New York or Sydney. In fact, upon showing a friend studying a maters in music this article, he couldnt agree more. "It is only now, with the physical recordings, that we can perfectly reproduce music. Anything written before this ability can never be perfectly reproduced as we have only the fundermentals of how it sounded" ....he said
The 1950s version of The Planets really stood out for me as it reminded me of the 1984 book cover. As for the rest, they certainly do need reinventing!
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