ANALYSING CD COVERS Lizzie Garrard

EVOLUTION OF CD COVERS The first CD cover released that was popular with the public was ‘The Visitors’ by ABBA in 1981.

You can tell this is an old CD cover because the photo used on the front has obviously been taken by hand and no editing has been used. The font is also very basic and there isn’t really a lot going on in the picture.

Whereas now, CD covers are a lot more enticing to the audience, using bright colours, effects, editing and a HD quality camera. Pictures however, aren’t always used in CD covers nowadays. With the evolution of editing and technology, quite often covers are created on computers with different effects.

CD COVER ANALYSIS – ABBA: THE VISITORS ‘The Visitors’ was not only the first CD cover to be released by ABBA, but the first CD cover to ever be released.

Compared to Jess Glynne’s newest CD cover ‘I cry when I Laugh’, you can see this now looks incredibly dated. This is a very good comparison to show how much technology has changed and how they could have taken, designed and edited Jess Glynne’s one all in one day, however this this ABBA CD would probably have had to have been planned out.

The photo also would have been have to been perfect as they wouldn’t have been able to edit anything out of it at the time this was made (1981).

CD COVER ANALYSIS – JESS GLYNNE: I CRY WHEN I LAUGH Jess Glynne released this album in August this year and it has been a big seller and highly popular with the public.

Her album cover is in a way simple, but very effective. They have used a close-up of her face, make-up still in tact but with wet hair across her face. We can see they have used a HD quality camera and high-key lighting which stands out well against the pale pink background. In the bottom right-hand corner we see they have edited the photo and the background has changed to purple, possibly connoting to the fact that her album is different and quirky with a different side of songs her fans may never have seen before.

This is completely different to the older CD cover, you can see from the two pictures how technology has made a massive difference to the appearance of CD covers throughout the years.