A book is known by its cover. An album is also known best by its cover. The biggest factor in album cover is the cover design. Some artists were able to sell their albums based purely on the strength of the cover.
There are many companies that specialize in the designing of album covers. One of the leading companies in the UK, called Garrod and Loft house, specializes in album cover design. A lot of old albums have the G & L logo. There is an entire website dedicated to the album covers. The name of the website is www.albumcovers.com.
Album covers need to be protected as they can spoil over a period of time. Good quality material should be used in making album covers. They should be laminated for a long life.
There are many treatments that are applied to enhance the appearance and durability of the album cover. For protection, album covers are covered with plastic foil.
Apart from the upper cover of the album, there is an inner protective cover also. This cover protects the album against dust and handling. It is a normal shaped cover. It slides in the outer cover in an easy way. The cover has an inner sleeve. This inner sleeve is made of unprinted white paper. The cover also contains a paper sleeve which supports the thin plastic bag. The inner sleeve does not have holes. It is usually printed with the lyrics in the album.
A music company named Decca records used a system of color coding. The blue color on the sleeve of cover depicted stereophonic recording. The red color depicted monophonic recording.
The cover of the album generally contains the reference number. There is usually reference number, branding and the name of the artist. The album cover contains the title of the album. The other list includes engineers, band members and producer. The names of all these people are on the cover. Generally, these names are repeated on the spine of the record cover. This helps people when they need to get a particular album from a shelf.
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