Album Artwork Is Dead

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Monday, 4th August 2008

Having read an article in Smashing Magazine stating that album artwork was dead because of the digital age, I thought I'd stick my oar in and disagree whole-heartedly with that statement.

Not only do music players display album artwork, many of them do a very, very good job of it. Apply bought coverflow because they wanted to display album artwork really well, so the big boys still think it's important too. In fact, how often do you now see the artist's website get a re-work to look more like the latest release? Quite a lot! That's because the artwork is spreading further than just the front of the record.

Not only is it important, but people are still thinking a lot about the artwork, as is proved by Idiot3's The Monster and the Grey Goose EP, where the band has taken lyrical references and used them in the design.

For those who might argue that the artwork is now tiny, that change happened quite a long time ago when cassette tapes took over from vinyl and the area used for artwork reduced from twelve inches to four. Rather happily, CDs increased that size a little. Yes, it's smaller than a CD (depending on your resolution of course!) but it's still there and it's just as important.

Long live album-art!