The document provides analyses of the album covers for 14 different albums. It summarizes the key visual elements of each cover, including images, colors, fonts, and how they relate to the album title and artist. Overall themes examined across the covers include visual representations of the music genre or artist, use of symbolic colors, and intentional design choices to convey meaning and attract audiences.

1. Album Cover Analysis

2. Anvil - Metal On Metal On the cover the images shown is a Angle grinder cutting through an Anvil these images highly reflect to the Band’s name and the title of the album enabling for the viewers to see a visual reflection of the Album as well as referring to the album name metal on metal. The text used on this album cover has heavy connotations of metal conventions. These titles with the sharp ends usually suggests death and many Metal bands tend to use text on their albums bands such as Metallica and Iron Maiden. The colours used in the title is a bold red. Red has connotations of blood and aggression the connotations reflect on the band’s Genre as the Metal genre is fast and aggressive. Also red carries a largely positive connotation due to it’s brightness and is effective in advertising in order to gain more viewers not just for the Metal fans. Overall the album is a superb reflection on the band with this approach fans of the band or genre can easily identify the musical genre.

3. Lady Gaga – The Fame MonsterOn the cover the images we see is the artist Lady Gaga covering up half of her face with her jacket suggesting the artist is revealing her identity to the audience also suggesting her struggle with fame so she is covering herself. The text used is similar to Bold Arial and on the T of the Monster it appears to look like a crucifix suggesting a religious experience possibly from the artist or in the album. The Main colours are black and white. The clothing she is wearing is a black jacket the black represents sophistication, formality, elegance. Also because of how the artist is positioned the hint of mysteriousness and death can be distinguished. The colour of the text is white the connotations we can suggest peace and innocence and these also reflect on Gaga’s pose. Overall the album is a very powerful medium of intertextuality. With this approach it gives the audience an insight into her personality and musical genre , as well as confusing the audience into a ‘judge by the cover’ response and in this way attracts a wide audience and maintains a wide majority of popular music fans.

4. Pixie Lott – Turn It UpOn the cover the images we see here is the artist posed looking away from the camera suggesting something has caught her eye. This is the only dominant image on the cover so it suggests that nothing else is showing any importance except the artist on show. She is wearing a black top like the Lady Gaga album the black is showing connotations of sophistication meaning the artist is classy. The font on the cover is fairly big dominating the lower half of the cover it is showing the name of the artist again indicating importance and the font is very fancy and elegant suggesting the artist’s personality. The colour of the text is white connotes innocence and usually a positive sign. Overall the album is a high reflection towards the artist making the audience suggest her attitude and personality and it is mostly positive attracting new and recurrent fans.

5. Eminem – RecoveryOn the cover the images we see is a male figure we assume to be the artist facing away from the audience walking on an empty interstate. The interstate heavily connotes American culture creating meaning to the audience that it’s American based. We don’t see anything else on the interstate except the artist and we are able to see in the far distance of the interstate. As we can see it is blurred to emphasize the length of the interstate possibly showing a long road to ‘Recovery’. The text used is bold and it stands out to show it’s importance for the viewer. The O in Recovery is a red circle with a the first aid symbol inside it. The connotations of red suggest blood and danger which we can relate to with the first aid symbol and why it’s there. Also what is peculiar about the title is the E has been mirrored in order for the to suggest that Recovery is a reverse process. Overall the album sends a powerful message of the Artist’s intentions.

6. Weezer – WeezerOn the cover the images we see are all the members of the band superimposed on a blue background. There are no other objects or background to this album meaning that the band only want to show and emphasize their appearance on the cover. The members are posed to look happy and act normal so it shows that there is no intention to bring the audience’s attention to something. The main colour is blue, Blue often symbolises wisdom and intelligence suggesting the band’s attitude also it is bright so the audience’s attention can easily be grabbed. The text is situated on the top right of the page the font is simple and has no style to it suggests that the band’s sophistication and elegance is to a low standard. The colour black is used for the text to stand out from the blue background and also to suggest formality. Overall the album doesn't show any sort of effective use of effects that could be used to show a different side of the band but the album still proves it can be effective even in the simplest ways.

7. Selena Gomez & The Scene – Kiss & TellOn the cover we see a close up of the artist Selena Gomez she is looking away from the camera like the Pixie Lott album it is suggesting something has caught her eye. We see her hair on the image is covering up some of her face and the lipstick she is wearing is made to look like a love heart to symbolise a love interest and to reflect towards the name of the album Kiss and Tell. The colour of the lipstick is pink, pink shows connotations of feminism which is appropriate for the context. The text used on the album cover is very stylised and and bold has been used in some of the text. This is used to emphasize the importance of what is being put in bold. Also a significant feature of the title is that the ‘&’ has been stylised to look like a love heart to show connotations of love interest and feminism it highly suggests the genre of romance within the album. Overall the album shows a good connection with the artist and the audience as some of the features are intentionally used to create meaning.

8. The Smashing Pumpkins – Siamese DreamOn the cover we see a medium shot of two young girls looking happy in the picture. The title of the album is called ‘Siamese Dream’ and the picture of the two girls suggest Siamese twins. The intention is to show the audience a visual reflection of the album’s title and allows a good visual representation. The colour of the sky is white which is peculiar so it possibly suggests the ‘dream’ state again referring back to the name of the album. The colour that has been used primarily is orange. Orange can be associated with happiness and stimulation in which the album is representing. Also orange has a high visibility so this may influence an advertising factor towards it’s success. The font used in this album has been made to look fancy and styled it is used to suggest a different side towards the bands music. Overall the album shows a very good visual representation in what the albums message is trying to deliver and it has been executed well.

9. Michael Jackson – BadOn the cover there is a medium shot of the artist posed intentionally for the audience to show his attitude of being ‘Bad’ as the title suggests. Again like The Smashing Pumpkins album it is primarily a visual representation about the artist. The colour of Michael Jackson’s outfit is black. Black is associated power and formality and judging by his pose this seems very appropriate in the context. The name of the album is red, red brings text and images to the foreground it can be used as an accent color to stimulate people as it is bright and noticeable. The background is white most likely to emphasize Michael Jackson’s appearance as there is no images in the background. The text used for the word 'Bad’ has been made to look graffiti style like. Graffiti is usually associated with being Bad so in the context the text used is very well approached. The text used for ‘Michael Jackson’ is large and bold. The colour used for this text is black as the background is white the black will stand out from the white. Overall the album is simple and is a good representation of the message of being Bad creating meaning for the audience.

10. R.E.M – In Time 1988 -2003On the cover the image we see and the only image is the Earth’s Moon taking up most of the album cover. This is most likely used in relation to their smash hit ‘Man on The Moon’ also the album is called In Time 1988 – 2003 it shows their long presence as a band and they may be trying to imply that the moon is a long way from Earth and in their context the band have been together for a long time. The main colours used is Blue and Black. The black background allows the blue. moon to stand out on the cover. The text used on the album is large and bold to again to stand out on the album and the colour of the text is white. Having the white text from the black background allows it to show out even more. Overall the album is simple and quite relevant towards the band due to a single referencing the moon.

11. Savage Garden – Savage GardenOn the cover we see a medium shot of the duo as you can see on the album they are half cut out on the album this shows mystery with the duo and the audience can suggest what the duo’s feelings and attitude are like to them as they do not want to reveal their full identity. The album is in full black and white and it shows power, elegance and innocence with the duo. Black and white can be associated with negative and positive connotations but the duo appear to look powerful, sophisticated and the larger content of white shows purity so the album is more positive. The text on the album appears similar to the basic font Arial and doesn't really show effect but the colouring effect around the text makes it seem more effective. The two words have a different layer of colour around them one black and one white. Since this is a duo the audience suggests that the two people have different sides to each other as black and white represent different attitudes and it creates the sense of uneasiness. Overall the album has been created to it’s simplest but it’s still effective by it’s use of colour.