Generic conventions of album covers include prominently displaying the artist's name to identify them without looking closely at the image. The image typically fills most of the cover to make each album stand out. Complementary colors are often used to link the image and text. Additional conventions are an album title below the name and genre-specific lighting choices that reflect the music's style.

1. Generic Conventions of an Album Cover
While analysing the three chosen album covers, I recognised the typical
generic conventions of an album cover, which made it recognisable to the
audience targeted. Generic conventions seemed to include:
• A bold, large/ oversized artist name- possibly to help the audience
identify the artist without them having to look beyond the image as it is
attention grabbing and steals the focus away from the image. A
large/oversized artist name could also signify vanity in which the artist
know that they are well recognised and promote they’re album by only
their name.
• An image which fills the album cover-This could have been used to
make the album individual as a large image stands out from other
albums making it unique and ‘different’.
• Similar colours used throughout- This makes each feature of the
album link together. For example, in the Christina Aguilera album
cover, the passionate colour of red has been used for her lips and also
to highlight her surname. This creates a link between the image and
the name and could suggest that perhaps Christina Aguilera has the
characteristics of passion within her personality.
• Underneath the artist name was also the album name
These were the only similarities that I was able to identiy. However, I found
that each genre differed when it came down to the mise-en-secene. For
example, the lighting used for an album of an ‘indie’ genre, used low key
lighting to create a sense of realism and connote reality. On the other
hand, album covers of an ‘r’n’b/soul’ and ‘pop’ used a large amount of high
key lighting. This could have been used to flatter the artist or to take the
audience away from reality rather than towards it, as the lighting is
artificial.