Second Ancillary Task - Album Cover

I have decided to create an album cover for my artist, which I will then incorporate onto my homepage for my website. So I have started looking into album covers, the first fact that I found was album covers are roughly 4.75 inches by 4.75 inches. I will now start to analyse other artists album covers before I start the initial design process of my cover.

This is the album cover of a Lady Gaga CD, I have chosen to look at this one because as she is known for her outlandish behaviour I wondered if her album cover would also represent this. The most eye catching part of the cover is the artists face, which has been well edited so it's very defined, it almost looks 3D, this is a good way to make the cover eyecatching, therefore visually appealing to her target audience. She has also chosen harsh black makeup, to emphasise her facial features. Her face is covered by an upside down triangle, which is associated with the 'illuminati.' The background is a purple background, which has been put on a gradient so desolves into a lighter purple. The bottom of the cover has images of lady gaga's head. In the bottom left hand corner, is a 'parental advisory' sign, this is used on many explicit videos, but in this case I feel that it used to connote the extremism of her personality.The only writing is the artists name, and the name of the album is one of her songs, so I will bare this in mind when designing my album cover. They have chosen a rather girlish font, for a female artist.

The next album I have chosen to analyse is pop singer 'KE$HA' this keeps with the same conventions of the Lady Gaga album, the artists face is the main attraction on the page, it is fairly big, and extenuated, however, I feel that this album cover is quite ferocious, the image is harsh not smooth, and the font chosen is pointed like spikes. I think this fits in with the album name 'Animal' so the idea of the cover is to be fierce, I will also keep this in mind when making my own album cover, this is emphasised by the lightening bolt that has been added to her face, I also think this connotes the shock that she has caused as an artist.