While old-style album artwork is drawing its last breath, digital album art is taking on a life of its own. As Wired reported last year, there are a number of designers bringing advanced digital techniques to the operating table—online contests, liner-note fly-throughs and DVD-style menus, for example. George White Warner Music Group’s senior VP of strategy and product development, said:
“We’ve been looking at a few technologies (for digital album art), and have been trying to bring these to Apple, to encourage them to bring that level of experience to the iPod,” says White. “A very simple demonstration that we’ve done takes the Gnarls Barkley liner notes and does a fly-through (using Adobe Flash Lite). You’re actually moving through the lyrics and artwork. It’s sort of like a theme park ride through the album. It’s really, really cool-looking on an iPod.”
More recently, Wired pointed to a blog from London-based graphic designer Phil Clandillon called Sleevelessness, which documents and explores the changing role of graphic design and the web in promoting music. Clandillon recently pointed out the widget for Radiohead’s In Rainbows and Justice’s video for “DVNO”.
Now we’re noticing artists on MySpace using animated artwork to gain attention on the over-satured site. Zeegisbreathing points us to a band called Discovery (a side project from one of the members of Vampire Weekend) that is using a psychedelic flash-coded cover to stand out. @&*$*rw*#&we(@@#@…. Woah, sorry, we think we just had a seizure.
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April 16th, 2008 at 11:00 am
Thanks for the love. This is a great subject a lot of people have been talking about. Just yesterday after looking at Discovery’s album art I thought about translating some of these new ideas into tangible form. Along the lines of bringing ear buds into the record store, buying music in some form, and walking out of the shop listening; how about sewing a mp3 player into a stuffed animal, with a headphone jack in the chest of the animal, or wherever really. Now you’ve opened up a door of possibilities. Once there is a cute stuffed bunny wearing a straw hat loaded with ‘Rabbit Foot Blues’ by Blind Lemon Jefferson then its ON! How about those limited KAWS toys loaded with the latest remix from DJ ______. It could get really gross before it gets really good but hey…who knows. If anyone would like to talk with me more about this I’ve got ideas galore. Enable me to bring these ideas to life!
April 16th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Music and art will always have a relationship. The tangible part of holding the art in your hand is certainly disappearing from major label acts (sadly), but independent musicians are still making cds and they still desire good design.
Even though I design a lot of cds, it’s kind of nice to see the dissolving of the old industry norms. Eventually something new and unexpected may pop up to set a new direction. I haven’t seen that happen yet, but things like Radiohead’s widget are the baby steps.
April 30th, 2008 at 1:45 pm