The challenge of an album cover is that it has to do so much with such limited space:
- It has to stand out amongst other CDs.
- It has to be memorable.
- It has to suggest the genre of the music.
- It has to have an iconic and original image.
- It has to sell the artist behind the music.
- It has to have a constant concept running throughout.
- It has to instantly have an impact in the audience.
- There are many different features of album covers but the 8 most relevant ones are:
- A good album cover has the right combination of following and subverting conventions.
- Modern album covers may be 'post-modern' or have referential or ironic qualities.
- Some album covers attempt to shock or surprise the audience.
- They use colour and language to relate to everything mentioned previously.
- An artist's first album is typically named the artist.
- It may be useful to base the album cover on something else to link the two in the audience's mind.
- Elements of the album cover may suggest the theme of the album without illustrating it.
- Because of digital music consumption, it has to understandable when it is made smaller.
