The 20 Best Album Covers of 2015 January 2, 2016
Posted by gwyoung in Art, Lists, Music.Tags: 2015, album art, year-end
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Top 15 Album Covers of 2014 December 20, 2014
Posted by gwyoung in Lists, Music.Tags: album art, year-end
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This blog didn’t get a lot of action this year, mostly due to a shift of focus on other projects, but you can count on my fondness for lists to keep me posting at least at the end of a year. Let’s kick things off with some awesome album art from 2014:
Some good album covers from 2013 December 17, 2013
Posted by gwyoung in Art, Lists, Music.Tags: 2013, album art, year-end
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Alphabetical by artist. I haven’t listened to most of these, but I like looking at them.
The Top 40 Album Covers of 2012 December 18, 2012
Posted by gwyoung in Art, Lists, Music.Tags: 2012, album art, year-end
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I know it’s a bit excessive, but I have so much fun looking at good album art and writing album art lists that I just couldn’t restrain myself. #11-40 are in alphabetical order in the gallery and the top 10 are enumerated below. FYI, this year’s general theme seemed to involve enticing me to listen to metal or hardcore by means of mouth-watering album art. Feast your eyes below:
10. flatsound – sleep
9. People Get Ready – People Get Ready
8. Trey Anastasio – Traveler
7. The Sea and Cake – Runner
6. Laurel Halo – Quarantine
5. King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard – 12 Bar Bruise
3. Ancients – Star Showers On the Euphrates
2. Jacques Greene – Ready
1. Torche – Harmonicraft
More album art May 5, 2012
Posted by gwyoung in Art, Projects.Tags: album art, photoshop
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After my last album art post, I kept chugging along with the same project until I felt myself losing interest and running out of fresh ideas. I made another batch of nine before moving on to some other photoshop work (posts soon to come). I might return to this at some point, but for now the project rests with these:
Album Art Revisited April 12, 2012
Posted by gwyoung in Art, Projects.Tags: album art, photoshop
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Followers of this blog might recall one of my first posts, sharing the album art I made for my introductory art class’ final project. Well, recently I’ve been inspired to revive that undertaking, so I downloaded a free trial of Photoshop Elements and proceeded to play around with it, creating 15 new single covers for some of my favorite songs as of late. Most of the source material is from Google image searches, but some are from pictures I’ve taken over the years. Like I’ve said before, what most intrigues me about album art is its ability to both capture and re-define the essence of the song it represents, so once again I attempted to match and speak to the music with the tools of visual composition. I’m pretty pleased with the results:
I’m always trying to think of more ideas to work on, so be sure to comment with feedback or requests!
The 15 Best Album Covers of 2011 January 7, 2012
Posted by gwyoung in Art, Lists, Music.Tags: 2011, album art, year-end
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I know you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but 2011 had quite a few releases that intrigued me to listen based on album art alone. Often the music was a let-down compared to the beautiful art encasing it, but on rare occasion the music stood up on its own to complete the perfect pair of visual and aural imagery. So, just for fun, I’ve compiled a list of my favorite 15 album covers from 2011, to complete my year-end coverage (although I do have a nice surprise in store for my fellow list-lovers out there.) Criteria for the list include both ability for the art to capture the feeling of the music and pure aesthetic quality. Some interesting patterns: most of this art is very minimal, or blue-colored, or both. Also, breasts and cleavage were quite popular this year, as were cute dogs.
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The 20 best album covers of 2010 December 20, 2010
Posted by gwyoung in Art, Lists, Music.Tags: 2010, album art, year-end
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I’ve always had a fascination with album art, especially that which matches the music contained within its sleeve in an uncanny way. Thus, mostly to amuse myself because I enjoy seeing a bunch of good album covers sitting right next to each other, I’ve compiled a list of my 20 favorite album covers of 2010. Most of these albums also sound great, but note that that was not a requirement to make it on this list. Enjoy the view:
20. Active Child – Curtis Lane
19. Emeralds – Does It Look Like I’m Here?
18. Two Bicycles – The Holy Forest
17. David Lynch – Good Day Today
16. Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
15. †‡† – CDR
14. Robyn – Body Talk
13. Memoryhouse – To The Lighthouse
12. Sufjan Stevens – The Age Of Adz
11. Avey Tare – Lucky 1
10. The Chap – Well Done Europe
9. Wolf Parade – Expo 86
8. Hisato Higuchi – Henzai
7. Caribou – Swim
6. Liars – Sisterworld
5. Menomena – Mines
4. Julian Lynch – Mare
3. Fiveng – Easy
2. Panda Bear – Last Night At The Jetty
1. Kanye West – Power
Album art January 6, 2010
Posted by gwyoung in Art, Projects.Tags: album art, photoshop
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My final project for my introductory art class was an exploration of album art. I’ve always been sort of fascinated by how something entirely visual can convey the same feeling evoked by something entirely auditory. After looking closely at some of the cover art for my favorite albums to see what I liked about it, I set out to make my own. At first I wanted to re-imagine the existing art for some of my favorite albums that I felt wasn’t up to snuff when compared to the music, but then quickly scrapped that idea since my preconceived notions of what should be on the cover were interfering with my ability to create something new. Instead, I decided to make artwork for 7″ singles for individual tracks that had no existing art. I tried to match the feeling of the song with the images I used for the cover, and I did most of the work in Photoshop using either photos I’ve taken or interesting pictures I found through a simple google search. Here’s what I came up with:
safer in the dark 
