Adam Lambert: For Your Entertainment

“Thank you to those who appreciate and understand that the album cover is deliberately campy. It’s an omage to the past. It IS ridiculous” and “For those that don’t get it: oh well… Glad to have gotten your attention.” [Adam Lambert on Twitter]

Johnny Pate Trio

Weird funky cool

I just thought this was weird looking. Plus I like her name.

Record Sleeve Collection

What a cool idea for a blog. Kavel Rafferty collects old record sleeves for her blog, Record Envelope.

Indie Cover Gallery

I found this link thanks to JL Monty at the HOW design forum. It's part of the RPM challenge to record an album in 28 days.

U2: No Line On The Horizon

Read about it here.

Album Art Not Dead Yet

"You are creating a sleeve that you want to be as iconic as possible.... It's got to work when it's a thumbnail on Amazon, it's got to work on the shelves at Tesco, and on the racks at HMV.

With bands being able to sell music online, it frees designers from the constraints of retailers. For years, designers have had to work within the constraints of retailers like Tesco, HMV and Virgin. They dictated the packaging, the dual case CD, because of the racking that was designed specifically to stock dual cases. Years ago, if we proposed an alternative format, it was always knocked back because retailers wouldn't stock it.

But now what is fantastic is that we see bands selling music online, where they can sell either a digital download or offer the option... to buy a special packaging version of the product, that can be mailed to them, that can be any shape, any size and any format."

Tom Hingston, of Tom Hingston Studio, has designed covers for the Rolling Stones, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Gnarls Barkley and others.

In Stone Age Caves, Art and Music Mixed

I thought this article was worth posting a link for. The earliest marriage of art and music from Discovery News:

At least 12,000 years ago, the most popular musical events might have taken place in torch-lit caves next to walls covered in art, according to new archaeological research in France.

Stone Age-era caves there bear paintings located in the most acoustically resonant places, where sound lingers or echoes.

The first cathedrals, theaters and concert halls, researchers now theorize, may have been inspired by musical performances held in caves. [read more]

"Everyone thinks it's a dying art," Stoltze explains in his Fort Point Channel studio. "But the truth is that there's a lot of really great things still being done by the small record labels and designers."

So says the author of the new book, 1000 Music Graphics: A compilation of packaging, posters, and other sound solutions in an interview with Christopher Muther at boston.com.

Stoltze is optimistic about the future of album art. I’m trying to be. He things that people will continue to want to have something tangible in their hands instead of just a bunch of digital files. That seems right to me and since it’s something I love to design, here’s to the little flicker of hope that Stoltze has given me.