For the Project, one of the elements we have to produce, is a digital package, with album cover art etc. Taking this into account we felt it was a good idea to research album covers within our genre.
Firstly I started at Bastille, who I have looked at many times throughout the research posts, as they fit a lot of the typical stereotypes for the genre. The album cover I looked at was "things we lost in the fire", the font follows their previous covers, and as with many bands, their font is a part of their identity; often a base fonts that have specific characters edited. This makes them unique to the band, which as i have mentioned in my audience research is a popular ideal within the indie genre, especially with bastille and their fans. So the use of a unique font to them is not a surprise. It is also effective marketing as whenever you see the font it reminds you of the band etc.
moving onto the actual image, it involves some of the elements used in the music video, and in itself doesn't have too much meaning, this is effective at making the user want to see the music video and understand the full meaning. Similar again to how bastilles song "laura palmer" uses a cryptic title to entice the listeners to watch the music video to grasp the meaning behind it, and become part of the aforementioned exclusive group of "super-fans" that get the reference.
The next album cover I looked at, was the fray, again we can see the specific font for the band, with the neon lights, again this is the theme carried out for most of their covers, and creates a branding that the audience and fans will expect from the artist. This keeping the identity also represents how indie fans like to heavily associate themselves with the values of their artists, and their identity to a certain extent includes their values and beliefs, that the audience can relate to.
Sometimes artists drastically change their image, this is often also embraced by fans , as they like the excitement of the artist "rethinking" themselves. A relevant example of this is the 1975 , who have over recent years since the release of "chocolate" built up a substantial fan base in the rock/indie genre. They originally had a defined artist image where all of their media was in black and white: for example all their Instagram pictures were black and white , as were all their album covers and merchandise. However , in a twist this year (2015) they posted cryptic comic book strips that some fans took as the band splitting up. Eventually as they released more , it became clear the band was taking a "hiatus" to reinvent themselves. To usher in this new era , they have changed their social media presence to white and pink , a huge reverse from their original identity , but creates hype as the fans become excited about the promise of "new sounds"
