Album Cover Research - Hardcore Punk

With the 'Hardcore Punk' genre it is conventional that the album covers are not a choreographed photo of members of the band and tend to focus more on artwork that will gain a link to the band. By incorporating band logo's and titles they can still create a cover that will represent the band and are also able to create a band image by keeping these elements similar on other artwork. 

Gallows - Grey Britain

This is the album cover for 'Grey Britain' by 'Gallows'. This is conventional as it doesn't consist of any image of the band members and its main focus is of a logo that will relate to the band. By keeping artwork simple they are able to create band merchandise from the same artwork, which is related to this heaver genre where the fans are generally more dedicated to supporting a band. The font used for the writing of 'Gallows, Grey Britain' is very unique and could easily be recognizable on other albums as part of the bands icon. 

The color pallet is extremely limited on this album cover and although it relates to the album name of 'Grey Britain', it is also a conventional aspect to this genre as they tend to be deep, bold, meaningful, and emotional, rather than happy and upbeat with lots of color like a pop song.

While She Sleeps - This Is The Six

This album cover also conventionally focuses on artwork of a band logo rather than constructed images of the band or other settings and situations. Similar to the Gallows cover is uses no color but just tones of grey; however this album cover does not feature the band or album name which is an unconventional aspect as only fans of the band would recognize it by this album cover. This may have been done to create a mysterious identity that may intrigue people but consequently makes the album simple and easy to look at without lots of bulky text. A vintage style has been adopted for this album cover which could easily be incorporated into future artwork.

Billy Tallent - Billy Tallent III

This album cover looks slightly different from the other two instantly due to the fact it uses more color, however it still refrains from using any photographs and focuses on artwork that can have resemblance to the band. Similar to the other two covers this one also possesses a slightly old/vintage style to it with un-neat edges and bold, textured fonts. The logo here is very basic but would is memorable alike the others enabling a link to be created between the album cover and the artist without the need for images of the band. 

Bring Me The Horizon - Sempiternal

This album artwork is a totally different approach to the other three but is still conventional to the genre due to the stereotyped tattooed scruffy styled males with depressing facial expressions relative to the genre of music and depressing lyrics. The colors on this album cover are toned down and the composition of it is still very basic with the only thing in the shot being the band members stood in front of a vintage style backdrop / wall. The fonts used on this cover go from a classic formal font to a more rough looking, hand written style font. 

This is the style of cover I think we will focus on creating so that we can create instant recognition to the band with a well composed shot. I think that for a band that is trying to gain popularity, this is the best choice of artwork in order to create a known identity of the band before a relation between logo's is made.