History of Album Artwork

Last week when the weather wasn't the best I decided to use my time and start researching album artwork for my genre - Indie. This is because as well as our music video we have to create what is called a 'digi pack', so it is important to research album's just as much as it is the music video.

Album artwork, or cover art by definition is either an artwork as illustration or photograph on the outside of a published music album and was created by Alex Stienweiss in 1938. He created the idea of custom artwork on record album covers and designed the first covers with original design, replacing the existing cardboard which simply said the name of the album and artist. His covers all seem to be abstract pieces of work with a lot of colour used to make it as eye catching as possible. The font and size of the font varies in each of the covers making all of them unique.

By the late 1940's, all major record albums featured their own colourful papercovers. Some used classic art while others used more original designs. Once the work of Alex Steinweiss was produced many more music producing companies followed in his footsteps and started producing the same, with all the albums containing art on the cover. These included the works or artists and designers such as: Jim Flora, Jim Amos, Rudolph de Harek as well as more of Alex Steinweiss’s work.

During the 1950's album covers didn't really develop, the trend was still bright colours with the artists name. But although the idea stayed the same there was a clear improvement between the works of 1940 and 1950, as there is a lot more thought to composition and style - this majorly being shown by the legendary Elvis Presley and through the creation of Rock and Roll.

In the late 1960’s album covers started to become more creative using cartoon drawings, and higher quality photography to give the albums a more modern look. The Beatles were the main artist making the most unique designs for their albums with all of them being very eye catching and abstract showing that there are no boundaries with the album art and that anything could be done.

One of the biggest influences on album cover art and art in today's society was the introduction of computer imaging. First made in 1973, computer imaging is art created by the use of software on a computer, it gave the artists a huge range of effects and styles to use. 

Throughout the 1970’s and 1980's punk was the most popular genre of music. Though being very controversial punk was undoubtedly a revolution, the era effected the album art with black usually being the main colour instead of the usual bright and colourful theme. Like the music the album artwork seemed to turn a lot more controversial with artists pushing the boundaries of what they could publish.

Through the late 1990’s and the 21st Century album covers have been developed even more with the use of computer graphics and more detailed covers being shown. The works of art are very high quality and even more interesting to look at. Artists have even found the effects album art has on the sale of there album and have thrived on making them as appealing as possible. Artist have also tried to pass messages through there art though some works are found to be offensive to some viewers.