Analysing CD Covers – 3: Cage the Elephant – The Wishing Stone (Album)

Analysing CD Covers – 3: Cage the Elephant – The Wishing Stone (Album)

Front Cover

The album ‘Wishing Stone’ by Cage the Elephant is a similar type of rock as Pink Floyd. The front cover of this album shows a violent looking character which connotes mystery. The character seems fantastical as it seems to be a human with an animal head; this again is a very unconventional and unpredictable imagery which shows a good sense of creativity in the album. This could be important when considering our album cover. The gold and shadowed colours used for the cover give it a natural and rugged feel and the black font used for the title and band name works well with these colours. Getting the colour background is important for how the cover is displayed, and the font is in an old half gothic, half safari-like style giving it a very unique and different appearance. Originality is important.

Back Cover

The back cover of this album is very basic. One criticism is that there is no sense of authenticity due to the fact there is no barcode or copyright logos. However, the gold and shadowed colours are used again for good consistency which is important. There is a small black drawing of a tree and a caped character, again unexplained, keeping the independent features of the cover constant from the front through to the back of the album cover. Consistency is important alongside originality.

Inside Artwork 1

This first section of inside artwork is an important one as it contains the track list. The gold theme of colour is still present which goes well with the rest of the cover. The title of the band is found in the same gothic font at the top of the page for effect, informing the buyer one more time exactly what album they are listening to. Then comes the track list, 7 songs in a Victorian style, black font. This gives good historic context and suggests the album contains an old rock genre as it refers to earlier times in Britain. This kind of context is important when using the creative mind for an album cover. The last feature on this section of artwork is a drawing of a house on fire. This unexplained, almost random imagery is effective because it gives a fresh and unconventional feel to the album cover. This theme is kept consistent which is also good, as it leaves the buyer to make their own interpretations of the images, in this case the house could be seen as negative and it is important to get either a negative or positive idea across in the album cover.

Inside Artwork 2

There is nothing to talk about on this section of the cover except for the fact that this is where the CD would be. The gold colour is kept consistent as expected, and the page is blank.

Billy Greenall.