Sqwink Album Art Blog

This is my first in a series of CD Cover Showdowns—a showcase of 50 sleeves from the past few decades, that use a particular word or phase in their album title.

We as a race love to be free—and it is this notion that has transcended into music. So, this post is aptly named the Top 50 ‘Free’ CD Covers Showdown—a post is aimed to be light-hearted, yet informative! Now, I’ll stop my Jibba-Jabba and hit you with these 50 specimens in no particular order, so here goes…

Click Thumbnail Images to enlarge…

1. Tiny Dancers Album Artwork for ‘Free School Milk’—well that’s all well and good, but I wouldn’t want to share it with some kind of yetti…

2. Subseven. Weird…I’m not gonna be able to finish this blog post if that guy is planning a stare-off!

3. Yeah, Bruce Willis back on form in his latest Die Hard feature, which evidently has a soundtrack…of what, shooting?

4. A LaShell Griffin album, with a photo of the lady in question looking away from the camera and er, smiling at someone else.

5. Indie band, Elbow.I’m not sure what that bloke’s doing with a wind-up back, but whatever.

6. StretchArmStrong certainaly look happy—but Free At Last?

7. Fred Hammond from The Potter’s House. Nice suit—just watch those Fire Ants.

8. Lost Cherrees. Never heard of them until today but by the looks of this fella, I’m quite pleased that I never had.

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I can remember the last couple of albums that I designed, where one place where accuracy is paramount is placing text and logos in the CD spine.

You literally have less than 1cm to squeeze all the elements into this thin strip of CD ‘real estate’—the dreaded spine of the album’s artwork. As any good designer will tell you—if there’s ever a place to concentrate your efforts whilst designing a band’s album, it’s here.

Well, as 80% of all music is now purchased online, this small segment of album artwork is seldom seen in the online world. Artists and bands alike often release two versions of their CD art—a booklet for the physical world and a digital-booklet for online use.

The production of physical albums is by no means dead (and neither should it be), but as time goes on, and more artists choose just to release digital versions of their music—album artwork may no longer have any backbone.