Album Cover Analysis

She’s A Machine – CD Cover Analysis

She’s a Machine is the most recent album from Alice in Videoland, and was released in 2008. The main colour on the CD cover is a bold, sunshine yellow, which connotes the music being upbeat, and lively. The extreme colour will attract the attention of the target market. The use of shocking, intense colour, and the strong contrast between the acid yellow and the candy pink incorporates a punk image into the album cover. The artwork on the cover is minimalistic, simple shapes, no different tones or shades; it just uses black block shapes over the yellow backdrop. The images show cogs, components of machinery, which supports the title of the album. The cogs and parts are drawn with quite thick black lines, to show them up against the background more, intensifying their impact. The black of the machinery merges into a black background of an image of a female character, wearing what looks like a hat, or a large hood, with some sort of goggles sat atop it. The woman has her chin up, in a defensive manner, showing a lot of attitude. The expression on her face is quite confident, almost smug and she is drawn in a slightly cartoon style, following the same theme as the cogs, only using line, no tonal shading. The facial features can only be seen by the shadow caused by the features, such as the shadow underneath the nose. The image of the character uses thinner, more delicate lines to suit the female character, and the shapes and lines of the hair are more refined than that of the machinery. The contrast between the black and the yellow reminds me of Police tape, the “Do not cross” tape that is installed around crime scenes, so the album cover seems to me as a bit of a warning, but you want to know more anyway, it looks like an interesting album. The font used to write AIV in the top right is a cute, candy pink, colour, but uses a graffiti font to contrast this idea. The graffiti typography is very current, and modern, and is associated with being rebellious, which will attract people to the CD.