Sqwink Album Art Blog

If you’re using iTunes to manage your MP3 Music Collection, there’s nothing more irritating than having the tracks without album artwork. When you view your music in Cover Flow View, all you’ll get is an array of blank-looking jewel case simulations with a musical-note symbol in the center (see image below, Right).

To get around this, and have all your wonderful albums paired-up with the original CD cover art (see above, Left), just do one simple thing…Right-Click, go into the pop-up menu and select ‘Get Album Artwork‘. Providing you have a free iTunes account, some, hopefully, stunning graphics should replace the musical-note emblem (which is currently the default image, until maybe iTunes 8 or 9).

The Guillemots are hardly a famed-bunch for fantastic album artwork—take a look at Through the Windowpane for example, but when I saw the design for the single Get Over It (below), I simply gasped. Why? Because, after hearing the track (and incidentaly liking it) I pondered the reason why the CD design was simply a red plastic rope-looking monstrosity with text over the top.

Fuelled by curiosity, I sped to the iTunes Store (er, online that is) to find out more about this seemingly-unthoughtful album art. Then, and what may be obvious by now, I saw the artwork for the Guillemots new album Red (pictured below). Now, this CD design makes no sense to me either, but I could see the reasoning behind the photography used in the Get Over it single.

I’m not sure what this huge red ball sitting in a dark tunnel supposed to be, but I do like it. Let’s face it, that image is both memorable and elegant. I’m kinda into the Guillemots anyway, so I have a fair idea of what they’re all about—and this album art certainly ‘fits the bill’.

On a negative note, though, I don’t like the Guillemots logo. It’s just terrible, drab and uninspiring, for me anyway. I’m unsure of what it may be representing, nor the reason why it has survived previous album releases and re-surfaced for Red.

Be all this as it may, I think this artwork is fitting for band’s music that it represents. At the beginning of this post I was ranting on about the single taken from it when viewed out of context. Now I have seen the big picture, I have upgraded my opinion of Get Over It from ‘what is this supposed to be’, to ‘clever concept, but only works as part of a whole’. Overall, I rate the CD single design 4/10, but the album 7/10. Any comments, feel free to leave one…