Cover art

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Harper's Magazine, June 1896, by Edward Penfield Edward Penfield, Harper's June, 1896.jpg
Harper's Magazine , June 1896, by Edward Penfield

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), music album (album art), CD, videotape, DVD, or podcast. [1]

Contents

The art has a primarily commercial function, for instance to promote the product it is displayed on, but can also have an aesthetic function, and may be artistically connected to the product, such as with art by the creator of the product. [2] [3]

Album cover art

Album cover art is artwork created for a music album. Notable album cover art includes Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon , King Crimson's In the Court of the Crimson King , Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, [4] [5] the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band , Abbey Road and their self-titled "White Album", among others. Albums can have cover art created by the musician, as with Joni Mitchell's Clouds , [6] or by an associated musician, such as Bob Dylan's artwork for the cover of Music from Big Pink , by the Band, Dylan's backup band's first album.

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 Unfinished Music No. 1: Two Virgins), offending churches, trademark or others. [7] There have been numerous books documenting album cover art, particularly rock and jazz album covers. [8] [9] [10] Steinweiss was an art director and graphic designer who brought custom artwork to record album covers and invented the first packaging for long-playing records. [7]

Joanne Gair's early album artwork such as David Lee Roth's 1986 Eat 'Em and Smile album cover helped launch her career. [11]

Book cover

A book cover is usually made up of images (illustrations, photographs, or a combination of both) and text. 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. 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 cover art has had books written on the subject.[ citation needed ] Numerous artists have become noted for their book cover art, including Richard M. Powers and Chip Kidd. In one of the most recognizable book covers in American literature, two sad female eyes (and bright red lips) adrift in the deep blue of a night sky, hover ominously above a skyline that glows like a carnival. Evocative of sorrow and excess, the haunting image has become so inextricably linked to The Great Gatsby that it still adorns the cover of F. Scott Fitzgerald's book 88 years after its debut. The iconic cover art was created by Spanish artist Francis Cugat. With the release of a big Hollywood movie, however, some printings of the book have abandoned the classic cover in favor of one that ties in more closely with the film. [12] [13]

Magazine cover

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 [14] (11 featuring the Willie Gillis character), [15] 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. [16] [17] Mad magazine has a long history of placing the Alfred E. Neuman character prominently on its cover. [18]

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. [19] 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). [20] But some of what is considered the world's best journalism has been tabloid. [21] 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. [21]

Good cover art can lead readers to this fact; the New York Herald, for example, offers some examples of tabloid cover art. [22] [23] So too does the News & Review , a free weekly published in Nevada and California. [24] The tabloid has thrived since the 1970s, and uses cartoonish cover art. [25] Tabloids have a modern role to play, and along with good cover art (and new ideas) they fill a niche. [26]

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, [27] and Gene Buck. E. H. Pfeiffer [28] did cover illustrations for Gotham-Attucks; Remick, F.B. Haviland Pub. Co.; Jerome & Schwartz Publishing Company; Lew Berk Music Company; Waterson, Berlin & Snyder, Inc.; and others.

Books

Newspapers, magazines, comic books

Sheet music, recorded music

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Norman Rockwell</span> American painter and illustrator (1894–1978)

Norman Percevel Rockwell was an American painter and illustrator. His works have a broad popular appeal in the United States for their reflection of the country's culture. Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life he created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine over nearly five decades. Among the best-known of Rockwell's works are the Willie Gillis series, Rosie the Riveter, The Problem We All Live With, Saying Grace, and the Four Freedoms series. He is also noted for his 64-year relationship with the Boy Scouts of America (BSA), during which he produced covers for their publication Boys' Life, calendars, and other illustrations. These works include popular images that reflect the Scout Oath and Scout Law such as The Scoutmaster, A Scout Is Reverent and A Guiding Hand.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Illustrator</span> Narrative artist who makes images for printed and electronic products

An illustrator is an artist who specializes in enhancing writing or elucidating concepts by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text or idea. The illustration may be intended to clarify complicated concepts or objects that are difficult to describe textually, which is the reason illustrations are often found in children's books.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Body painting</span> Form of art using the human body as the canvas

Body painting is a form of body art where artwork is painted directly onto the human skin. Unlike tattoos and other forms of body art, body painting is temporary, lasting several hours or sometimes up to a few weeks. Body painting that is limited to the face is known as face painting. Body painting is also referred to as "temporary tattoo". Large scale or full-body painting is more commonly referred to as body painting, while smaller or more detailed work can sometimes be referred to as temporary tattoos.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Album cover</span> Photo on the front cover of an album

An album cover is the front packaging art of a commercially released studio album or other audio recordings. The term can refer to either the printed paperboard covers typically used to package sets of 10 in (25 cm) and 12 in (30 cm) 78-rpm records, single and sets of 12 in (30 cm) LPs, sets of 45 rpm records, or the front-facing panel of a cassette J-card or CD package, and, increasingly, the primary image accompanying a digital download of the album, or of its individual tracks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J. C. Leyendecker</span> German-American illustrator

Joseph Christian Leyendecker was one of the most prominent and financially successful freelance commercial artists in the U.S. He was active between 1895 and 1951 producing drawings and paintings for hundreds of posters, books, advertisements, and magazine covers and stories. He is best known for his 80 covers for Collier's Weekly, 322 covers for The Saturday Evening Post, and advertising illustrations for B. Kuppenheimer men's clothing and Arrow brand shirts and detachable collars. He was one of the few known gay artists working in the early-twentieth century U.S.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jim Flora</span> American painter

James Flora, best known for his distinctive and idiosyncratic album cover art for RCA Victor and Columbia Records during the 1940s and 1950s, was also a prolific commercial illustrator from the 1940s to the 1970s and the author/illustrator of 17 popular children's books. He was a fine artist as well, who created hundreds of paintings, drawings, etchings and sketches over his 84-year life.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alex Steinweiss</span> American graphic designer

Alexander Steinweiss was an American graphic design artist known for inventing album cover art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeff Easley</span> American artist (born 1954)

Jeff Easley is an oil painter who creates fantasy artwork for role-playing games, comics, and magazines, as well as non-fantasy commercial art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Judith Hunt</span> Illustrator

Judith A. Hunt is an American illustrator, painter, cartoonist, and designer, who has produced a diverse array of artwork for books, magazines, television, comics, videos, and toys. She has worked as an art director and staff illustrator/designer for magazine companies. As of 2018, she illustrates educational texts and children's books from her studio in Kennebunk, Maine, and showcases her fine art in local art shows.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joe Phillips</span> American artist

Joe Phillips is an American artist, known for his gay-themed illustration, erotic animation, and his earlier work on superhero comic books.

Joanne Gair, nicknamed Kiwi Jo, is a New Zealand-born and -raised make-up artist and body painter whose body paintings have been featured in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue from 1999 to 2017. She is considered the world's leading trompe-l'œil body painter and make-up artist, and she became famous with a Vanity FairDemi's Birthday Suit cover of Demi Moore in a body painting in 1992. Her Disappearing Model was featured on the highest-rated episode of Ripley's Believe It or Not. She is the daughter of George Gair.

<i>Demis Birthday Suit</i> Photograph by Annie Leibovitz

Demi's Birthday Suit, or The Suit, was a trompe-l'œil body painting by Joanne Gair photographed by Annie Leibovitz that was featured on the cover of the Vanity Fair August 1992 issue to commemorate and exploit the success of Leibovitz's More Demi Moore cover photo of Demi Moore one year earlier. As an example of modern body painting artwork, it raised the profile of Gair in pop culture as an artist in that genre.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Raymond Kursar</span>

Raymond Kursar is an American artist, illustrator and graphic designer; known for his Broadway play posters, fine giclee limited edition prints and the movie classic Gone with the Wind collector's plate collection.

<i>Disappearing Model</i>

Disappearing Model is a trompe-l'œil body painting by Joanne Gair that was part of episode 1.19 or 119 of Ripley's Believe It or Not!, which was the highest-rated episode. The number 119 represents the nineteenth episode of the first season of the show, which aired exclusively on the TBS superstation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gene Buck</span> American author, playwright and lyricist (1885–1957)

Edward Eugene Buck was an American illustrator of sheet music, musical theater lyricist, and president of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Drew Struzan</span> American illustrator

Drew Struzan is an American artist, illustrator and cover designer. He is known for his more than 150 movie posters, which include The Shawshank Redemption, Blade Runner, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, as well as films in the Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, and Star Wars film series. He has also painted album covers, collectibles, and book covers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">André De Takacs</span> Sheet music cover illustrator

André C. De Takacs was an illustrator. His artwork features on the covers of sheet music. He produced art for posters, postcards, and film company promotions. He also wrote music and poetry. The Smithsonian Libraries have some of his song sheet covers in their collection. The University of South Carolina's Tin Pan Alley Sheet Music Collection also includes his work.

Richard Staples (Dick) Dodge was an American illustrator.

The Gotham-Attucks Music Publishing Company was an African-American owned firm based in Manhattan, New York, that was formed July 15, 1905, by merger of the Gotham Music Company and the Attucks Music Publishing Company. The Gotham Music Company was founded by composer Will Marion Cook and songwriter Richard Cecil McPherson (aka Cecil Mack) and the Attucks Music Publishing Company, the first African-American music publishing company in the United States, founded in 1904 by Sheperd Nathaniel Edmonds (1874–1941). Gotham-Attucks ceased to operate as a legitimate music publisher after its sale to the "song shark" Ferdinand E. Miersch in 1911.

Mattias Adolfsson is a Swedish graphic artist and illustrator, known for his detailed and quirky drawings in ink and watercolor. He lives and works in Sigtuna, just outside of Stockholm, Sweden.

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