Ministry of Sound Album Covers

Just trying to get a feel of how the overall design for the Ministry of Sound publications look, these are for their album covers:

Just a general summary for the album covers is that they are heavily focussed around the ministry of sound logo, and the visual style/theme fits to the genre of music for that album. They are very high impact and eye catching and often use black to contrast with the other highly saturated colours.

The Addicted to Bass series have a much more consistent design throughout, based around the ideas of speakers,

The mash up mix covers have a very particular style, compared to the others, a distorted type face usually involving black and yellow, and is the centre of attention for the design. The background image has some sort of distortion and fits the theme of music whether it be an iPod, headphones, turntables, CD or a casette tape. There is no consistency with the 'Mixed by the Cut Out Boys' text, although in about 3 or 4 there has been a similar style of type. Again with the colour, there is no consistency throughout, however, they are very vivid schemes of colour used.

Fatboy Slim Covers

The Fatboy Slim covers normally have some kind of humour involved with them, because some of them are just brilliant designs - I will steer clear from trying to emulate this theme and cartoon style.

Layout and Type

This has quite a sinister feel to it, the hand drawn type which is dark brown on a black background creates an eerie feel to it. Nicely presented though, clear and communicates the message well.

A show for typographers and those kind of type people. It has that old fashioned, magicians show feel to it, with the swirly type and illustrated corners - the words "Roll Up! Roll up!" seem to come to mind. Beautifully presented though, not too over the top for the front, but just enough fuss to make you think 'ooh whats that!', which is exactly what I did.

Ministry of Sound Brief

More Type and Layout

A slightly more corporate example than I have posted previously:

Branding can have just as nice type and layout, like this example, simple, the letters are spaced nicely and the blue is a bright eye catching contrast to the black.

Word Boner

A few images from wordboner.com, simple in design but effective in communication. This is the kind of type that interests me, it's fun, it's witty and it makes me smile!

Looking at Type and Layout

It's been a while since I have looked at pure type! So to help me get inspired for this Bloc+Blur brief I will be looking at type and layout pieces.

This one is brilliant, I found it on Google Images but it linked me to a previous LCA BAGD students blog, its by someone from Amsterdam called Toko I believe:

Simplicity at its finest, a plain sans serif font which looks like Helvetica, pure white type on a black background, but with the type shifted vertically. Genius.

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.