Album Cover Composition Research

I have plenty of albums, but I must say I didn't have the first idea of designing an album cover - even as a student of Graphic Design I just think 'ooh pretty' or 'ah, crap'. So I really need to look into the composition of them...

This is really cool, and typical of covers from this genre - it almost recreates the club vibe of the dark clubs with the bright lights. The lights almost draw you in, very eye catching when on the shelf. The text is very simple, just on three lines - readable, and in 2 different but very similar fonts.

Again, quite typical of the trance/dance genre covers, recreating that club vibe. The colours work really well here, it makes the silhouette stand out which directs straight up to the title. The same font has been used here but altered slightly so there are two different visuals, however, they still fit together well.

This is a very different layout to the ones previously, there is no image here, just a solid black background which makes the text stand out. However, I do not feel as drawn or motivated by this.

Cool design, but the line drawing of the Hospital logo in the background is barely visible with the bold white type. Maybe if it was smaller it would look different and/or better.

Very simple but sophisticated design. The text really stands out, and the image looks really interesting. The colours give it that nightclub vibe, without having to use the obvious imagery as seen previously.

This is a different composition from all the others, the use of different layers gives a feeling of depth, again the bright colours against a black/dark background give the feeling of being in a club.

The text looks rather odd, and cheap but this is purely to look at different compositions, not whether I like it or not. There are quite a few lines of text in the corner which seems rather cluttered, different fonts and sizes have been used which seems to over complicate it to me. 

Extremely simple, not a lot to say in terms of composition.

Uses the artist name, title and photo but still maintains simplicity - especially with the black and white photo which gives it a classic look, ideal for Greatest Hits really.

The use of desaturated images like this one, makes the whole piece easier to navigate around. The whitest area on the picture is the text which draws us in, ideal to stand out on the shelf.