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Album Cover Art Download

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In the last article, we discussed some of the elements of album cover art and I would like to continue the discussion with some more details and an album cover finder that is a must for any fan of album cover art.

As I stated previously, many famous artists have been commissioned to design and produce album covers. For example, the Rolling Stones and pop artist Andy Warhol are famous for the cover art on the Stones? album ?Sticky Fingers.? As the story goes, at a party in 1969, Andy Warhol casually mentioned to Mick Jagger that it would be amusing to have a real zipper on an album cover. A year later, Jagger proposed the idea for ?Sticky Fingers.? But, there was a flaw in the shipping process, the zipper would press onto the album stacked on top of it, causing damage to the vinyl record. The solution? The zipper had to be pulled down before the album was shipped, then it would only dent the album covers. However, they never figured out how to keep the zipper from scratching the other album covers. Additionally, some department stores refused to display the album, feeling it was risque and not family oriented because of the model's snug jeans and the zipper display. But this album is historic because it broke new ground and also saw the debut of the now famous Stones logo: a caricature of Jagger's lips and tongue.

If you are a Janis Joplin fan, then you would probably know that the famed cartoonist Robert Crumb designed the cover for Joplin's album ?Cheap Thrills.? This revered, yet misunderstood artist, drew the cover as a favor to Joplin, who he befriended in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood where they both resided. He was paid $600 for his work by Columbia Records, which later sold the artwork. Crumb was asked to do a cover for the Rolling Stones, but refused because he did not like their music. Crumb is also the artist for the ?Keep On Truckin?? poster and ?Fritz The Cat,? and has more than seventy covers to his credit.

The Internet is full of sites related to album cover art and is just too numerous to list. There are sites devoted to fan favorites, the weird and unusual, particular decades and so on. Many users have turned to ebay to find lost art treasures from their childhood. But I want to share a website and album cover artwork finder that is not only convenient, but a must have for any art lover.

I recently spoke with Richard Nicol, the program designer and owner of ?Album Cover Finder.? (http://www.albumcoverfinder.com) The program has been available for more than two years and is a godsend for anyone interested in album cover art.

?Album Cover Finder? allows the user to not only find specific searches for interesting album cover art, but also allows the user to download selected songs from the release. I asked Richard about his fascination with album cover art.

?I've always been interested and loved album cover art and wanted to create a database where the users could not only look at album cover art, but experience it as well. The program allows the user to browse through the cover art of a particular band and also lets the user to download particular songs through iTunes as well. The main feature is convenience, you can utilize iTunes and not only get more of an experience for the music, but the great artwork involved with the music and artists.?

But ?Album Cover Finder? is more than just iTunes and album cover art. The program allows users to look at different art work from different countries as well. Some of the art work involved in a US release may be different from that of a UK release or German release, only adding to the experience. The program also allows users to review artist biographies, read reviews of a particular release and add the artwork to their iTunes library and an iPod. ?Album Cover Finder? also allows users to find additional cover art from a particular artist or band, copy the artwork to a clipboard and has artist videos and applicable tour information. ?Album Cover Finder? is a fully functional way to search for album artwork and includes free updates for registered users and is available at http://www.albumcoverfinder.com.

Now, I have only had the program about a week, but I have to admit spending literally many, many hours looking at historic artwork and listening to the songs associated with the acts. This software gets a hardy ?thumbs-up? and is a ?must have,? affordable program for album cover art connoisseurs and anyone with a fascination with art and music.

Needless to say, there can be a lot more written about album cover art and the impact it has had upon music and pop culture and cannot be summarized in a couple of articles. There are countless books, (I actually own one that talks about and illustrates naked vinyl and the images used to try and sell albums!) that detail album covers and the impact upon pop culture and music.

Additionally, there are so many web sites and blogs associated with album cover art, they are to numerous to list. Why there are even web sites devoted to preserving this treasured art and frame it for display.

Furthermore, did you know that June 1, 2007 marked the 40th anniversary of the release of the Beatles? ?Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band?? Not only is the release one of the most influential albums of all time musically, the cover art itself is iconic as well.

I spoke with Gary Freiberg, owner and operator of http://www.rockartpictureshow.com about ?Sgt. Pepper? who related to me that the album ?broke new ground and challenged the industry.? Gary and I talked about album cover art and the influences it has had on our culture. He also told me of a recent poll conducted by http://www.vinylrecordday.org that voted the ?Sgt. Pepper? album cover the favorite album cover of all time. Gary is world renowned for his work in the album cover art industry with his patented record album frame and his work has been cited and used by the Smithsonian, Home & Garden TV, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and thousands of satisfied Internet customers. And if you interested in getting your great album art framed, you may visit http://www.rockartpictureshow.com and tell Gary you heard about him from an article posted at http://www.isnare.com

Album Cover Art Download

At age 23, the ?Godfather? of album cover art, Alex Steinweiss accepted a job to design promotional materials for Columbia Records. What would happen next would revolutionize the music industry, specifically vinyl records, when he invented the illustrated album cover. A rather obvious, but brilliant, idea was to create a titillating graphic package that would, not only protect the record, but advertise the artist and the music contained therein (prior to this, records were sold in plain, undecorated wrappers).

?Records used to be relegated to the back of the stores that sold refrigerators and stoves. You'd go to the counter and ask for the title you wanted,? recalled Steinweiss. ?I needed to shake up the industry, we had to do something like European poster art to draw the attention of the buyer.?

And ?shake up the industry? is just what Steinweiss did. Starting in 1939 with his first covers, for a collection of Rodgers & Hart's Musical Hits, Columbia executives saw the sales of the illustrated albums skyrocket, including one by more than eight hundred percent. Soon after that 78 rpm albums were adorned with decorated covers and displayed in store windows.

A new medium was born, album cover art became the norm and attracted established artists and inspired many new artists to enter the arena. It allowed the record company and the artist to promote a visual image and identity with the music.

So who was Alex Steinweiss? Let's explore his life in detail. Steinweiss grew up in Brooklyn's Brighton Beach area and he attended the Abraham Lincoln High School from 1930-1934 and that is where he started his graphic designing career. In a program taught by Leon Friend, Steinweiss and his classmates were known as the ?Art Squad,? designing school publications, posters and signs. When he was seventeen, Steinweiss? work was showcased in PM Magazine. He received a scholarship to Parsons School of Art and graduated in 1937. His first job was as an assistant to Joseph Binder, a position that lasted almost three years, before receiving a call about a new position at the newly formed Columbia Records. He designed all the covers for Columbia between 1939 and 1945, a period in which he developed and honed the graphic art of album cover design. In the period between 1945 to roughly 1950, he still did cover design for Columbia, but he was not the sole designer. He also began ?freelancing? and began designing covers for other record companies.

As a freelance designer with such record labels as RCA, Decca, London and Everest, Steinweiss was considered peerless. Using his own unique format of blending eye-catching illustrations, vivid color schemes and playful typography, Steinweiss created album covers for such musical greats as Louis Armstrong, Bela Bartok, Count Basie, Leonard Bernstein, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Kate Smith and many others.

His album covers are considered iconic and he designed them as miniature posters with a distinct personality for each cover. His signature font, the ?Steinweiss Scrawl,? first appeared around 1947 and his style and album cover design is synomonous with the Golden Age of Jazz, Classical and Popular music that was dominated by RCA, Columbia, Decca, Victor and London record labels.

In the 1950's, Steinweiss added photography to his album cover design palette. His use of strange, garnish colors, inventive lighting techniques and numerous visual puns and reference points only added to his unique style of cover design and has made him an icon in the music industry. By his own admission, Steinweiss claims to have designed more that 2,500 album covers.

His later work, from 1960 through around 1973, was working with the Decca and London record labels. It was during this period that he developed die-cut designs and collage. He retired to Sarasota, Florida around 1974 and remains semi-active, having designed at least one book cover and several CD covers as well as having designed liquor bottles, posters, pamphlets and titles for TV shows.

All of us owe a hearty thank you to Alex Steinweiss and his contributions to album cover art and music. Can you imagine no art work accompanying a vinyl record? I can't, and it is a great thing that Alex Steinweiss couldn't either.

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Robert Benson has sinced written about articles on various topics from Digital Camera, Arts and Entertainment Guide. Author Robert Benson writes about rock/pop music, vinyl record collecting and operates

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