Week 7 - Music And Graphics

I went to alexsteinweiss.com and searched through covers, in hopes of finding one that reminded me of a contemporary album. The second I came across this Rudolf Serkin record, I immediately compared the design to Kanye West's 2008 CD design.

Artist: Rudolf Serkin

Album: Beethoven: Sonata No.8 in C Minor (Pathetique)

Genre: Classical

Year: 1945

Cover Designer: Alex Steinweiss

Alex Steinweiss invented the album cover in 1938. His covers are icons of the genre because of the use of great graphics, colours and typography that were never seen before on packaging for music. His style can be seen during the golden age of jazz, classical, and popular music.

Artist: Kanye West

Album: 808s & Heartbreak

Genre: Pop/Hip-Hop

Year: 2008

Cover Designer: Brian Donnelly (KAWS)

KAWS originally was a graffiti artist from New Jersey, who worked on ads and animated Disney movies. Besides commercial-related pieces, the artist is also well respected in the fine art communities. His work is currently traveling around in USA art galleries, and being sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Besides both having hearts as the main attraction of the piece, there are many other reasons why I thought these albums appeared similar. Looking at the typography, both are simply done without too much colour or difficulty. The colour choice of the entire album seems to appear simplistic as well. Lastly, the lines presented on the album (the background of Serkin's and the left-side of West's) seem to add depth to the cover, without appearing to have used effort in doing so.

Additional Sources

Alex Steinweiss. Fri. 2 Nov. 2009.
http://alexsteinweiss.com/as_index.html

"KAWS (artist)". Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Fri. 2 Nov. 2009.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KAWS_(artist).

Petrou, Laurie. "Music and Graphics." Lecture. Ryerson University, Toronto. 20 Oct. 2009.