This document discusses different design elements that artists use on album spines. It notes that major record labels want albums to look professional to maximize sales, while independent labels prioritize the music. Artists experiment more with spine design. Nicki Minaj's albums followed a consistent design until her latest, reflecting a change in image. Simple designs with the artist's name, album title, and serial number appeal most to the author. Some artists use messy designs to show how they differ from others. Common conventions include the artist, title, colored spine, serial number, and label, though not all albums include every element.

1. • There are a lot of different spines on albums, due to each artist in
the music industry being different to one another – even if they are
in the same genre.
• This is another part of the album that the artist can experiment
with and be as creative as they want to be. For artists on major
record labels, (the Big 3 – Sony, Warner and Universal) I think the
creative aspect of the album would be very limited – or at least,
more so than an independent label – because they would want the
product to look really professional and sell as many copies as
possible to ensure they receive the maximum profit available to
them. For independent labels the music is the more important part
of the product rather than the visual aspect of the product.
• This is why artists like M.I.A and Lady Gaga have very different
looking albums, (M.I.A is signed to XL Recordings and Lady Gaga is
signed to Universal Records), as well as their genres being very
different.

2. This is an example of an artist that has followed a similar layout in their albums. The artist Nicki Minaj has
had her name, album title, the labels she is signed to and the serial number in the same place on the spine of
her albums up until her newest album ‘The Pinkprint’. I think this illustrates how she is a very professional
artist, due to her albums looking similar to each other in their design. I really like this concept because it
makes the albums relate, and makes them look appealing together. I think she has changed the design on her
latest album because she had a dramatic change in her appearance and this is reflected in her album. This
change makes her look a lot more professional and I think would make people in the music industry/general
public respect her more and take her more seriously than they used to. She has also used a similar name to
each of her albums, as each one contains the word ‘Pink’, which she has used because she calls her fans
‘Barbz’ and is known by her ‘Barbz’ as ‘The Harajuku Barbie’ (her longest lasting alter-ego).

3. These are some albums that I own which the design of the album is more of a simple
layout rather than being too complicated and advanced. They all follow similar designs in
that they have the artist’s name, album name and a serial number. ‘Bangerz’ and ‘Artpop’
both have the record labels on their spine of the album and ‘Glorious’ and ‘Pure Heroine’
don’t. I think this would be the type of design I would want my product to have because I
think a more simple layout would look more appealing to an audience and would make
people be more likely to buy the album. I especially like the ‘Bangerz’ album because of
how Miley Cyrus’ name and album title is the largest font on the spine, and it features
both the record label (the institution) that has distributed it and the serial number.

4. These albums are from artists which have tried to illustrate how they are different to everyone else in the
music industry. For Ke$ha, Diana Vickers and Avril Lavigne, they have opted for the handwritten/messy kind
of design. ‘Animal’ and ‘Let Go’ are two albums by the artists in which they portray their differences to other
artists because Ke$ha is stereotyped as a partier and someone that is obsessed with alcohol and Avril Lavigne
is the stereotypical goth/punk. These are both portrayed through the font they have used for their album
design as Avril’s looks slightly like graffiti or an etching into a surface like a table – suggesting that she is a
rebellion to society, and the font used for Ke$ha’s album looks handwritten which I think illustrates how she
accepts the label she has been given and is using a font ironically to show that she doesn’t care about what
people think of her and that music is more important to her than how her album looks. ‘Songs From The
Tainted Cherry Tree’ is Diana Vickers’ debut album and the font is similar to that of a newspaper article and
looks as though she has ripped up a magazine/newspaper and stuck different parts together to create this.
Although the spine for Katy Perry’s album ‘Prism’ is quite simple, I have placed it in this section because she
has used a triangle in place of the letter ‘A’, and M.I.A’s album ‘Matangi’ reflects her electronic/alternative
music style through the use of a green and red colour placed behind the text.

5. The conventions.
1. Artist’s name.
2. Name of album.
3. Different coloured spine to colour of text.
4. Serial number.
5. Record label that has distributed the album
(on most but not all).
1.
2.
3.
5.4.