Cover art is a type of artwork presented as an illustration or photograph on the outside of a published product, such as a book (often on a dust jacket), magazine, newspaper (tabloid), comic book, video game (box art), Album (Album cover), CD, videotape, DVD, or podcast. Cover art can include various things such as logos, symbols, images, colors, or anything that represents what is being sold or advertised.
Album cover art
Album cover art has a long history dating back to the late 19th century. This art is artwork created for a
Album and is one of the most representative techniques to show the changes and trends found within the music, art, culture, and technological industries.
As music became popularized, so did creating cover art. Throughout the years, cover art went through different stages and styles.
In 1938, Columbia Records hired Alex Steinweiss as its first art director.
Artists known for their album cover art include Alex Steinweiss, an early pioneer in album cover art, Roger Dean, and the Hipgnosis studio. Some album art may cause controversy because of nudity (for example, John Lennon and Yoko Ono's ), offending churches, trademark or others.[Heller, Steven, "Alex Steinweiss, Originator of Artistic Album Covers, Dies at 94," The New York Times, July 19, 2011] There have been numerous books documenting album cover art, particularly Rock music and jazz album covers.["The Blues: Album Cover Art", Chronicle Books, 1996][ 1000 Record Covers, Michael Ochs, Taschen Publications, 2005]
Joanne Gair's early album artwork such as David Lee Roth's 1986 Eat 'Em and Smile album cover helped launch her career.[, intro]
Book cover
A
book cover is usually made up of images (illustrations, photographs, or a combination of both) and text. It emerged in the 19th century when books started to become mass-produced.
It usually includes the book title and author and can also include (but not always) a book
tagline or quote. The book cover design is usually designed by a
graphic designer or
book designer, working in-house at a publisher or freelance. Authors can make suggestions for book cover design elements (e.g., a preferred color) but rarely communicate directly with the designer.
Once the front cover art has been approved, they will then continue to design the layout of the spine (including the book title, author name and publisher imprint logo) and the back cover (usually including a book
blurb and sometimes the barcode and publisher
logo). Books can be designed as a set of series or as an individual design. Very commonly, the same book will be designed with a different cover in different countries to suit the specific audience. For example, a cover designed for Australia may have a completely different design in the United Kingdom and again in the United States.
Book covers need to be effective at marketing, which can encourage reliance on stereotypical representations.
Book cover art has had books written on the subject.
Magazine cover
First showing in the 1900s, illustrated covers became common with magazines like Vogue and Cosmopolitan featuring full-page illustrations in the 1900s.
The first magazine cover with a photo appeared in 1932. Vogue was one of the first to adopt photography, and its first full-color photo cover was in July 1932. Famous artists like Salvador Dalí, Man Ray, and Juan Miró contributed covers to Vogue in the 1940s. Magazine cover artists include
Art Spiegelman, who modernized the look of
The New Yorker magazine, and his predecessor
Rea Irvin, who created the
Eustace Tilly character for the magazine. Magazine cover artists who were well known for capturing important political and social issues of the day include
Norman Rockwell, whose work appeared 322 times on the cover of
The Saturday Evening Post (11 featuring the
Willie Gillis character),
and Dennis Wheeler, whose 40 covers for
Time magazine illustrated social movements and news events of the 1960s and 1970s; seven of them are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
magazine has a long history of placing the Alfred E. Neuman character prominently on its cover.
[Maria Reidelbach. Completely Mad: A History of the Comic Book and Magazine (New York: Little Brown & Company, 1992).]
Tabloid cover
Today, the word tabloid is used as a derogatory descriptor of a style of journalism, rather than its original intent as an indicator of half-broadsheet size. This tends to cloud the fact that the great tabloids were skilfully produced amalgams of human interest stories told with punchy brevity, a clarity drawn from the choice of simple but effective words and often with a dose of wit.
[Day, Mark. (2008, August 21). "For a brighter future, tabloids could look to the past." The Australian, p. 38.] The gossipy tabloid scandal sheets, as we know them today, have been around since 1830. That's when Benjamin Day and James Gordon Bennett Sr., the respective publishers of
The Sun and the
New York Herald, launched what became known as the
penny press (whose papers sold for one cent apiece).
[McLaren, Leah. (2001, August 11). "Admit it: Tabloid culture is what we are" The Globe and Mail, p. L3.] But some of what is considered the world's best journalism has been tabloid.
[Wynne-Jones, Ros. (2011, July 28). "They've still got news for us." Independent Extra, p. 2.] From the days when
John Pilger revealed the truth of Cambodia's
Killing Fields in the
Daily Mirror, to the stream of revelations that showed the hypocrisy of John Major's "back to basics" cabinet, award-winning writing in the tabloids is acknowledged every year at the National Press Awards.
Good cover art can lead readers to this fact; the New York Herald, for example, offers some examples of tabloid cover art.[Berlin, Jess S. (2006, November 8). "Cyber tabloid will cover all the news that's virtually true." The Guardian, p. 20.]
Sheet music cover
Sheet music cover artists include Frederick S. Manning, William Austin Starmer and Frederick Waite Starmer, all three of whom worked for Jerome H. Remick. Other prolific artists included Albert Wilfred Barbelle, André C. De Takacs,
and
Gene Buck. E. H. Pfeiffer
did cover illustrations for
Gotham-Attucks; Remick, F.B. Haviland Pub. Co.;
William Jerome; Lew Berk Music Company; Waterson, Berlin & Snyder, Inc.; and others.
Gallery
Books
File:Ivory book cover MS Douce 176.jpg|Ivory book cover with scenes from the life of Christ,
File:Mitrohin for Zamiatin's Uezdnoe.jpg|Uezdnoe, by Yevgeny Zamyatin, 1916
File:RealMotherGoose.jpg| The Real Mother Goose, Blanche Fisher Wright, illustrator, 1916
File:The Great Gatsby Cover 1925 Retouched.jpg| The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, dust jacket art by Francis Cugat, 1925
Newspapers, magazines, comic books
File:OlympicClubTimesDemocratHeadline.JPG|Gentleman Jim Corbett and John L. Sullivan at the Olympic Club, New Orleans, The Times-Democrat, September 8, 1892
File:Billboard02 10thAnniv.jpg| Billboard's tenth anniversary edition, 1904
File:Vanity Fair June 1914.jpg| Vanity Fair, June 1914
File:Vanity Fair cover by Ethel Caroline Rundquist 1916.jpg|Skater with scarf, illustrated by Ethel Caroline Rundquist, Vanity Fair, January 1916
File:Silver Sheet January 01 1923 - BELL BOY 13.pdf| The Silver Sheet, a studio publication promoting Thomas Ince Productions Bell Boy 13, E. H. Pfeiffer, illustrator, January 1923
File:The Spider April 1934.jpg|Pulp magazine Spider, vol. 2, , April 1934
File:AmazingMan22.jpg| Amazing Man Comics no. 22, illustrated by Paul Gustavson, May 1941
File:LIFE 06191944 Eisenhower cover.jpg| LIFE magazine, official U.S. Army photo, June 19, 1944
File:MisterMystery12.png| Mister Mystery #1, Key Publications, July–August 1953
File:Horisont 1 1967 kaas.jpg|The first Horisont magazine in Estonia, 1967
File:Road & Track March 2011 cover.jpg| Road & Track automobile magazine featuring a Porsche 991, March 2011
File:May 2019 Artforum Cover.jpg| Artforum art magazine, featuring Cauleen Smith in a digital video Sojourner, May 2019
File:Net_magazine_June_2020_cover.webp| net computer magazine, June 2020
File:Broadcast_Magazine_November_2024_cover.webp| Broadcast trade magazine, November 2024
Sheet music, recorded music
File:Bon Bon Buddy cover.jpg|Sheet music for the Broadway theatre musical, Bandanna Land, Andréa Stephen Chevalier de Takacs, illustrator, Gotham-Attucks, publisher, 1908
File:My Favorite Rag by James White - cover by Grim Natwick.jpg|"My Favorite Rag" by James White, illustration by Grim Natwick (one of his earliest published works), 1915
File:TheBeatles68LP.jpg|Cover for The Beatles' White Album, 1968
File:Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin US promotional single.png|Cover for Led Zeppelin's promotional single "Stairway to Heaven", 1971
File:Queen & David Bowie - Under Pressure.jpeg|Cover for Queen and David Bowie's single "Under Pressure", 1981
File:Three of a Perfect Pair.jpg|Cover for King Crimson's album Three of a Perfect Pair, 1984
File:De La Soul - 3 Feet High and Rising Cover.jpeg|Cover for De La Soul's album 3 Feet High and Rising, 1989
File:Beyoncé - Beyoncé.svg|Cover for Beyoncé's eponymous album, 2013
File:"1-800-273-8255" cover by Logic.jpg|Cover for Logic's single "1-800-273-8255" featuring Alessia Cara and Khalid, 2017
File:Look at Me!.jpg|Cover for XXXTentacion's single "Look at Me!", 2017
File:Deltarune Chapter 1 Soundtrack.jpg|Cover for Toby Fox's soundtrack to the first chapter of Deltarune, 2018
File:BTS Dynamite (NightTime Version).svg|Cover for BTS' single "Dynamite", 2020
File:Charli XCX - Brat (album cover).png|Cover for Charli XCX's album Brat, 2024
See also
