Album cover art adapts to digital environment

Cover image of Park Moon-chi's “I Want To Hold Your Hand” Courtesy of Park Moon-chi

By Park Ji-won

K-pop personality Crush's latest album “From Midnight To Sunrise” gained attention recently as the cover art allegedly plagiarized the design of an ice cream package. It turned out that it was simply an internet meme to make a joke about the similar color combinations, but the entertainers and the ice cream maker ended up joining hands to promote each other's products. Binggrae decided to hold a promotional giveaway with 100 boxes of “The Excellent,” its popular ice cream brand, and five signed copies of Crush's album up for grabs. To enter, fans had to upload a photo of Crush's album cover on their Instagram accounts.

A screen capture showing a collaboration between K-pop musician Crush and Binggrae Courtesy of Binggrae

Album cover design trends have been moving in a new direction amid the rising number of people using mobile music streaming services. As more think the cover design reflects the artists' identity and the concept that they want to create, more artists started to put more effort into them, moving away from simple portrait-style images and introducing new artistic designs such as retro-inspired artwork and illustrations that help audiences understand the album concepts. More importantly, as more people choose to listen to new songs based on thumbnail images uploaded on streaming services, more eye-catching designs are emerging.

Going retro

Retro-inspired artwork and contents has been gradually gaining popularity in recent years. Park Moon-chi, an indie musician who has been known as the “queen of 'newtro,'” recently released a song “The Story of the Year.” For its cover artwork, Tree13, one of the most famous retro-style illustrators collaborated with Park. “Newtro” is a Korean portmanteau of the words “new” and “retro,” meaning something incorporates retro elements in new, at least in name, designs. Her songs and music videos as well as the artwork went viral online as they remind people of those made in the '80s and '90s. The cover art is grainy and introduces fonts and fashion styles that were popular in the past.

Cover image of Sumin's “Love is Strange” Courtesy of Space Oddity

Park said she tried to discover references from K-pop music popular in the past.

“I did a lot of digging. But I was inspired by old vinyl album covers as they gives us old impressions. As you can see on those album covers, they used the word 'masterpiece' on the cover. So, I adopted that part and put it on my covers as well,” Park said during a phone interview with The Korea Times.

She thinks its appeal lies in its difference to images that are common these days.

“I think people become curious about my covers because they're not similar to ordinary covers. They are also nostalgic.”

In addition to Park Moon-chi, many artists have been introducing retro images into their album art designs.

Naver's On Stage, an online-based video service which introduces the music of indie bands, released a series of covers for its project “Digging Club Seoul” that were inspired by illustrations from the '90s.

Eye-catching images

Cover image of ADOY's album “Catnip” Courtesy of ADOY

“I read a comment that people listened to my music as its cover was made by Tree13. I also listen to songs if I like the cover art,” Park said.

ADOY, an indie band, gained popularity thanks to its unique album covers. It used artwork of Ok Seung-cheol, who mainly creates cartoon-style drawings. The covers drew people's attention as they are very colorful and it is rare for an album to have cartoon characters on the front.

“Recent album covers have vivid color combinations like that of ADOY and Jannabi. You can easily recognize the image,” said Chung Hye-yoon, a brand marketer of Space Oddity, a company that holds music-related events and projects. She was in charge of making covers for Digging Club Seoul.

Cover image of Bulgogidisco's “BULGOG!D!SCO” Courtesy of Bulgogidisco

Some rely solely on typography. Indie band Bulgogidisco's album is famous for its use of text on the cover.

Chung pointed out that there is a certain tendency for music companies to make covers with eye-catching images so that audiences can find them in the song lists of mobile streaming services.

“People listen to music through mobile-based streaming services, meaning album covers look very small on the screen. So, we check the covers displayed on mobile screens before releasing them and retouch them to make sure they can be easily seen on mobile devices,” Chung said.

Industry officials say that the covers are very important in terms of helping musicians attract more listeners.

“The eye-catching covers draw people's attention and encourage them to look at the musician's other album covers and listen to their music as well… It also helps people develop more interest in artists. For example, '1415' released an album with cover art that explains part of the album's story. This helped visualize and showcase the musician's identity. It also helps them attract more loyal fans,” said Lee Jim-in working for domestic A&R at Universal Music Korea.

As the importance of album art grows, musicians are investing more capital in the covers, seeking collaborations with other artists and holding exhibitions of the artwork.

“Many companies work with (freelance) illustrators rather than working with in-house designers… With the cover images and songs, we held an exhibition in 2018 on the theme of weather. The covers were later made into vinyl so that people could display them at home,” Chung added.