Album Cover Redesigns - (NEW) "Codes and Keys" by Death Cab for Cutie

[FinsUp1214]

Hey all!

Something I've really wanted to do and pursue is designing album covers. I'm a huge music lover, and love the relationship that a well-designed album cover can have with the album you're listening to. I feel like it's all part of the experience, or at least should be.

Along with designing new covers, I also really like to re-design existing album covers. I'll either do so because I feel the album is a poor design altogether, or I'll do it just for fun (even if the design is a good one). One design I'd like to get some C&C on is for James Blunt's Back to Bedlam.

I feel like the existing cover is very cluttered and "stuffed". There seems to be a few good ideas laced in there, but they get lost as they compete with each other. All in all, my problem with it is that there is just too much going on and seems randomly put together between Blunt's image, the image flow coming from his head, and the pattern on the background. My goal was to create a much simpler album cover that could be instantly recognizable and featured a much clearer, less cluttered design.

Without further ado....

I LOVE that monkey wearing the crown on the bottom left, and I felt that it could make for a strong, marketable image to be the focal point of the album artwork (can you imagine T-shirts with the image on it sold at concerts?). I wanted to clean it up a little and make it front and center. I like also that it seems to be mimicking a variation of the Royal Lion and Crown mark that you see associated often with England, and I like that it had the potential to really tie into the "Bedlam" theme (which is a nickname for a London Psyciatric hospital, if I'm not mistaken). I liked the double blue together, so I kept that general idea, but eliminated the faded tones to make the color of the album a bit stronger and elminated the golds and burgundy to give the colors less competition. Finally, I went for a much simpler and clearer typeface for the artist and album name, both to work with the more simpler tone of the concept and to prevent the typeface from diverting too much attention from the monkey.

I had a lot of fun with the concept and am definitely thinking of doing more album cover redesigns soon. C&C would be greatly appreciated! I'm always happy to learn and improve. Thanks!

[1clkgtramg]

Maybe its because its an iconic album cover, but it seems too simplistic. Not sure if your designs are good or not since its just an enlarged image that was already on the cover on a plain blue background. Do you have anymore designs to see what your design language is?

[IanC]

The original album cover probably seems a little bit cluttered as bedlam is a major point of it.

Chaos or madness. The whole point of the original album cover to have alot going on in it.

I do like what you have done though but it does take away the whole meaning of bedlam.

[pianoknight]

I actually like the concept better. "Bedlam" is conveyed in the monkey wearing the crown, IMO, and points "back" in an evolutionary sense from humanity.

Think the Jungle Book scenes with King Louie. It's a perversion of mankind, being devolved back into chaotic apes.

I think it's much better, visually.

[The_Admiral]

You made it look like some ultra-late-era Peter Gabriel album. The good thing about the original cover is that it properly denotes how much the music within sucks dick for spare change.

[FinsUp1214]

Thanks for the feedback, everyone!

I can see where it might look a bit too simple. Any ideas on how I can improve that? I'm all ears!

I suppose the reason I kept it so simple, just for explanation purposes, is that I felt that the monkey exemplified the "Bedlam" theme perfectly already, and didn't want to add anything else and make it redundant. That was my biggest problem with the original cover, that I figured all the images put together were meant to evoke "Bedlam", but that it didn't really need all of that to do it. That monkey mark was just too good and too exemplary for the theme that I didn't want it to get lost amidst a hundred other marks saying essentially the same thing. I guess that's kind of where I was coming from with it, if that makes any sense. All that said, as I mentioned earlier, I'm all ears for ways I can improve the concept, so send it all my way!

If it helps to kind of show what sort of album cover design I like and gravitate towards, I put this together as sort of an "inspiration board", so to say - basically a collection of some of my all-time favorite album covers, and especially those that inspire my design tastes in that field:

As you can see, I really like simplicity and central (or at least sure, if not central) focal points. I feel like they tell the story of the album and set the visual tone and theme of the album a whole lot better than more cluttered designs, or covers that only have a picture of the band (I HATE those kinds of covers! ). I'm still very new to taking on designing covers myself, so I know I have a lot to work on, but I have had a few ideas for a couple of other redesigns (some Coldplay, The Temper Trap, Jason Mraz, Death Cab for Cutie, and Fall Out Boy). I'm also trying to improve my photography skills so I can get some photo-based designs going (like the Killers and Vampire Weekend covers above). Once I get them worked at, I'd love to post them here and see what y'all think.

Thanks again!

[FinsUp1214]

I've got another design to show y'all! I'd love to get some feedback and learn what I can do to improve.

The concept is for Death Cab for Cutie's Codes and Keys album. I actually really like the original cover a lot as is, so this was a concept more for the purposes of exploring different ideas. Here's the concept, with some explanation to follow:

There's this graffiti art of a bird on campus at my school (Utah Valley University), and I've always been pretty intrigued by it. I've often wondered why it was there, what the artist was trying to say by putting it there, and what it really meant. I think of any form of art as an expression of course, but also a "code" for the artist's ideas and/or feelings. So in essence, I've always wondered what the "code" is behind this bird. The idea came pretty quick to use the bird for a Codes and Keys album concept to exemplify the idea of art being code, and I also felt it connected well to Death Cab's history, who featured a bird on the Transatlanticism cover (featured on my inspiration board posted above) and has a song called "Talking Bird" on Narrow Stairs and The Open Door EP (in short....Ben Gibbard seems to like birds or something!).

As far as the design itself is concerned, the original photo I took is actually inverted - the wall is grey and the bird is black. I inverted it because while working with the text, I liked the way orange and white worked against the dark better than orange and black worked against grey (and it helps to differentiate it a little from Transatlanticism, which featured a blackbird against a light background). I chose orange for one of the text lines because I felt it had great contrast and - I'm not sure how to explain it any other way - I felt it was an accent color that worked well for the tone of the album's music. Sounds weird and vague, I know, but I'm not sure how else to explain it. I hear that album and think of those colors, I guess! At first I was going to center the bird, but when I went to take the picture, it just didn't look right at the center. It seemed a little imbalanced for some reason and it just wasn't working for me. So I moved it over a little bit, and found as I did so that it left a great spot to place the text, so I decided to go with that set up for the shot.

I personally like how it turned out, myself. I was happy that I was able to get the image I had in my head out the way I wanted it to, at least! What do you guys think? What works and what doesn't? What could I improve on? Like I've said, I'm eager to learn and grow as a designer. Any help you can give would be much appreciated! Thanks!

[1clkgtramg]

I'm digging this one a lot. When I read the title, I was worried as I too like the original artwork. I like the reasoning behind it - possibly as a deluxe edition type of thing where the pound key is the "keys" and the bird is the "code" and it can also act as a successor to Transatlanticism (my personal favourite with Narrow Stairs in a close second). What if the bird was standing on a phone booth? I love the song "Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth With Money In My Hand" and have always wished there was an album cover that could somehow include a phone booth but still look interesting. It would also tie into the pound key from the original artwork. Just a thought

Now that I can see your designs capabilities are more advanced, I'm definately interested to see more.