ANALYSIS OF EXISTING SPINE DESIGNS

ANALYSIS OF EXISTING SPINE DESIGNS

The look of the spine on a CD case is significant as it’s what will be used to organise albums and what will be visible in a stack of CDs like the one

below. Often the design is similar to the style of the front and back covers in order to continue the established cohesive image of the artist. In terms of

conventions, the spine features the name of the artist and album, sometimes with the production company name and logos, as well as a serial number. These are just a few examples of how different artist’s

choose to present their image through the spine design.

One of the main designs that exists currently is a simple white background with black text, maybe featuring a bit of colour. This is clear and easy to read. Each of the examples to the left follow conventions, featuring the artist’s name and the name of the album. Ben Howard, Jason Mraz, Eminem and Sonic Youth’s design all also feature the record label’s name or logo, and every one apart from Ben Howard has a serial number too. In terms of fonts, the first three have gone for a more minimalist look which creates a neat and professional impression. The choice of font on We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things looks more like handwriting, which creates a personal feel and reflects Jason Mraz’s more easy-listening sound. The final two use bolder, darker fonts that reflect their harsher images and genres. I like the idea of using a simple design in my own work because the spine is such a small area that too much experimentation with colours and fonts makes it difficult to read properly.

Another poplar choice is to do a similar thing, but reverse the colours so that the background is dark and the text light. Again this makes it clear and easy to read. The examples above are continuing to demonstrate the following of conventions. They all feature the album and artist name and a serial number, as well as record label names and logos (with the exception of Body Language from Kylie Minogue). The font choices here link more obviously to the genre and style of the artist, as is best seen on the Timbaland album. There is also more variety in how the artist’s have chosen to differentiate between their name and the album name with hyphens, forward slashes, literal space, different fonts and even the use of the word ‘presents’ in the third example. I like the Grizzly Bear design with the use of two different fonts as I think it’s difficult to create variety in such a small space and they have managed to keep it interesting without sacrificing any clarity.

The third design option is to include more colour. Usually albums opt for this if they are continuing artwork from the front or back covers onto the spine. You can see some of this overlap in the examples below, particularly the Katy Perry and The White Stripes albums. Using colour does grab the viewer’s attention quickly and means they’re more likely to pick the album out of a stack of CDs. However it can mean that the clarity of what the spine actually says is lost, which is evident on Elephant, the third example below. Once again conventions are followed in these examples as most include the album and artist name, the record company and serial numbers. I think colour is very effective in presenting the style of the album and the artist and I would probably like to incorporate it into my own design because I think album art should be interesting and not too simplistic.

A convention that I’ve spotted is that artists tend to develop a house style across several albums as well as just within one album. The example of The Beatles’ albums on the right show this – how similar colours and fonts are used to demonstrate the progression of their sound whilst still remaining fairly consistent throughout. Other artist’s completely disregard this, like the Iron and Wine albums here. Each is a different design. Whilst this is irrelevant for my own work as I only have to produce one album design, it’s still an interesting concept and demonstrates how important it is to create a consistent style in order to have a conventional and professional finish.

CONCLUSIONCONCLUSION• The spine of the album needs to be clearly

legible. It needs to at the very least feature the artist and album name, as well as record company logos and a serial number if necessary.

• Basic, two- or three-colour colour schemes work best although there’s more room for exploration and diversity when it comes to fonts.

• The spine works best when it links cohesively to either the front or back cover, or both ideally.