This album cover for Kanye West's debut album "Graduation" features a brown bear bursting out of a white structure and reaching towards the sky, representing Kanye exploding in popularity. The bright colors and fantastical creatures are intended to attract audiences and entice them to buy the album. The use of the color pink and the bear mascot became signatures for Kanye. The font sizes and styles distinguish the album name from Kanye's name. By depicting himself as a bear, Kanye took a unique approach compared to typical rap album covers that feature photos of the artist.

1. Bright, vivid colours help the album cover to
stand out meaning that it is more enticing and
eye catching for an audience which makes the
album more likely to be looked at and then
bought because the album art initially attracted
an audience. Kanye also features lots of
unearthly creatures on his album cover which
would be intriguing for an audience to look at.
The album name its self ‘graduation’ explores the idea
of things such as moving on or passing something
which the artist Kanye west could be using to infer that
he is moving on to the next level of rap or progressing
far in his career. The use of pink colour for the font is
most likely used because the colour pink links in with
the bright theme of the album cover but also stands
out and contrasts from the background.
This is Kanye wests debut album and
the main feature/character we can see
is this bear named the ‘dropout bear’
bursting out of the large white structure
and propelling towards the sky this
probably is showing how Kanye is going
to explode and sky rocket in popularity,
the bear used on his album quickly
became a sort of trade mark of Kanye
as he features on other album covers
and in Kanye wests music videos. Kanye
may of chosen a brown bear to
represent his skin colour or ethnicity
due to this being his 3rd studio album
people would’ve seen him before so
could’ve made that link. Also if the bear
does represent him the way he chose to
dress the bear and give it a gold chain
symbolizes Kanye's style choices and
shows his views on himself to the
audience.
The font used on the album cover is a modernised
looking font, the Y and the W are in capitals in his name
and the word graduation is a slightly different font from
his name, this is most likely done so that viewers make
the distinction between his name and the album name.
the font size isn’t that big which means the audience
focuses more on what's happening in the picture.
The genre of the music this is representing is rap
music, compared to other album covers in the
rap/hip-hop genre, Kanye chose to represent
himself as a bear which is a brave thing to do on
his first album as most other album covers in the
rap genre often feature a picture of the rapper
and the name of either them or the album name,
not many other rappers have done anything
similar to this album cover.
Kanye possibly tries to show of his
uniqueness by, assuming he is
representing himself as the bear,
showing he is the only one taking off
while the other characters on the
cover are on the ground and all
seem to be women dancing. This
could represent how he feels he is
above anyone else and he sees
everyone to be below him. Also
using bright and exciting colours on
the cover could represent the music
on the album due to most of the
songs on the album being upbeat.

2. Like most other album covers in the rap/hip-
hop genre this cover features the artists in the
album on the album cover and it also features
the name of the album. In doing this is it
getting across clearly the information that the
audience would need when initially looking at
the album.
Hidden in the clouds are skulls
which can represent death or quite
possibly it can be a metaphor for
the souls of other rappers or
something relating to the hip hop
genre. Also the two rappers are
shown to be sat on two speakers
with broken records at their feet
which could also be a metaphor in
saying that the have sort of
‘destroyed’ all other competition
with their raps.
The Text styles used on this album
cover is clever the word ‘BAD’ , the
‘B’ in bad is made out of the
numbers 5’9 which links into the
black rappers rap name which is
Royce da 5’9 and he is the ‘BAD’ in
the group. In the work ‘EVIL’ there
is a backwards ‘E’ which is the
rapper Eminem's trademark used in
a lot of his album covers so using ‘E’
as his own in ‘EVIL’ means he is the
‘EVIL’ in the group.
The colour palette used in this album cover is mainly grey and white
colours as it is sets a plain back ground allowing other colours in the
cover to be more abstract for example the colours in the title stand out
against the grey back ground as do the colours on the broken records
on the floor.
The symbolism used in the album cover is not much. The white ‘D’ on Royce da 5’9’s hat
represents the state of Detroit in America which both of the rapper on the cover are from. The
other use of symbolism is that the background of the album with broken records and broken
speakers can represent a graveyard feel especially with the faces of skulls in the sky, this could
represent the rappers feeling that they have ‘slayed’ other rappers by producing this album.