Format Research

Format Research Front Covers

EMO- The Emo front cover shown here is typical with other such genre related albums. The cover shows an ink blotted sketched drawing of a black and white tree with a squeezed surreal looking heart growing from it. The symbolic and deliberately odd drawing fits with the music and therefore does work well as an album cover.

The text is also quite genre generic as it is rough looking handwriting as opposed to fancy lettering or block words, giving the cover a raw feel, an unpolished look so to speak.

ROCK- Very different from The Used’s album, Feeder’s 2006 release ‘The Singles Collection’ has a far more generic rock look to it. It’s very simple, the black and white image in the background of Grant Naylor playing guitar shows the audience what the album is straight away, guitar driven rock music. It’s also very uncluttered with just the one central image in the background. The text is simple, block capitals in a contrasting white over the greyscale background, looks cool without being too inventive.

GRUNGE- Nirvana’s Nevermind is a great example of a grunge album. As the genre wasn’t around for as long as many of the others, it’s hard to say that grunge had a generic example of an album cover or even an image, it took a lot of influence from the punk movement as well as rock and roll, but often they tried to make a point, even if as in this case many aren’t sure what this point is. Nirvana and grunge were known to shock, which is why this cover of a baby chasing a dollar is such a good example of the grunge movement. The text is very simple in their trademark serif text, unimposing, doesn’t remove focus.

METAL- Rust in peace by Megadeth The album's artwork was created by longtime Megadeth artist Ed Repka. It shows band mascot Vic Rattlehead and the leaders of the five major world powers (at the time) attending a secret meeting in Hangar 18, with Vic in the foreground presiding over the body of an alien. The world leaders, from left to right, are former British Prime Minister John Major, former Japanese Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu, former German President Richard von Weizsäcker, former Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, and former American President George H. W. Bush.

Rock

Emo

Grunge

Metal