2008 in Album Art

The year’s best cover art — from albums that actually didn’t suck.

All too often we see killer album artwork, only to find it covering a total musical let-down — perhaps banking on the trite notion that people will indeed judge a book, or in this case an album, by its cover.

So we sifted through a sea of mediocrity and sheer hideousness, both graphic and musical, to bring you the most innovative album covers of 2008 — from albums that were actually good. Really, really good.

THE ODD COUPLE

Just like movie sequels, second albums are usually more of a disappoint than an upgrade. Always the non-conformists, electro-pop-hop duo Gnarls Barkley does nothing of the sort. Their second album, The Odd Couple, oozes cinematic beats, powerful vocals and compelling lyrics.

The cover art belies the album’s unique urban sensibility bent through a prism of crisp electronica and vibrant Brit-pop-like undercurrents and an urban sensibility.

Best track: Going On.

19

From the UK’s smoky underground bar scene straight to the soundtrack of just about every American primetime drama, British sensation Adele is just that: a sensation. Amy Winehouse without the substance-induced self-destruction, her powerful raspy voice and infectious melodies stick to your soul like a housefly on melted licorice.

And there’s something to be said for using pure portrait photography in cover art — perhaps because it’s so incredibly difficult to do tastefully, it’s a rarity these days. The few contemporary artists who do it mostly go for an overly Photoshoppy textured and filtered photo, or simply bail with an abstract illustration.

19, however, is supreme in its clean, bold simplicity. The rich negative space and minimalist color scheme yield to the meticulous lighting and the natural curves, building a powerful sense of mystery and allure — a perfect visual metaphor for the music within.

Best track: Right As Rain.

MADE OF BRICKS

Another breath-of-fresh-air British import, Kate Nash burst onto the global scene this year. Made of Bricks vibrates with her perky beats and angst-driven yet profound lyrics, it’s like The Clash was reincarnated in the body of a 23-year-old girl.

The album art captures the Tim Burtonesque magic of Nash’s music — poppy, almost child-like beats and vocals that turn chilling and heavy in a split second under the burden of an adult mind.

Best track: Pumpkin Soup.

SANTOGOLD

The artist who took SXSW by storm and invaded the hipster scene faster than a new American Apparel V-neck did so in good right. Her eponymous debut album is nothing short of brilliant, with a sound so utterly unique that it may just be the stuff of tomorrow’s music history books.

The album artwork, much like the music inside, is a bold manifestation of minimalism with a punch, from the quiet, grainy black-and-white photograph blasted with an unexpected burst of gold, to the provocative layout and muted yet unusual typography.

Best track: Lights Out.

DAVID BYRNE & BRIAN ENO

Yep, we were all over David Byrne and Brian Eno’s latest album, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today — a more-than-worthy compensation for the pair’s 27-year-long absence from the music frontlines.

The cover design itself is both refreshing and nostalgic in that eerie retro-futurism kind of way, complete with slightly-off 3D imagery and an oddly metallic color scheme.

Our favorite track, Strange Overtones, also happens to be a free download on Amazon, so go grab a copy and be your own judge. Yep, it comes with the artwork.

IN RAINBOWS

There was buildup. There was anticipation. There was hype. Which means Radiohead’s In Rainbows had a lot to live up to and could easily disappoint. Except it didn’t.

The artwork itself captures the crisp, high-energy and indulgently vibrant sound of the album in all its organized chaos. Not to mention it inspired arguably even more awesome fan covers and a ton of utterly brilliant motion graphics.

The cover art even inspired an iGoogle spin-off — three artist themes designed by the band and an amazing motion graphics gadget for the House of Cards video.

THE SLIP

Speaking of buildup, no one comes anywhere near Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails in that department — we’re talking elaborate secret immersive games, iPhone apps, user-generated music videos, and a very clear message to major labels instructing them to perform anatomically impossible acts.

Their latest “surprise” album, The Slip, was released label-free and without any promotion under a Creative Commons license and despite (or, Trent Reznor may argue, because of) intentionally releasing the album to bit torrents first, it generated tremendous response with over 1.6 million downloads from the official website alone, on top of torrent downloads and CD sales.

And as far as the album artwork goes, the cover image — creepy-cool as it may be — isn’t really the album’s greatest feat. Each song on it actually comes with its own artwork, some alluding to older albums and clearly part of a bigger message for fans to decode.

We have to give it to NIN for extreme originality and innovation across pretty much every facet of the music industry and every fan touch point.

Best track: Discipline.

• Related Article: The 8 Best Ideas of 2008

Tidying Up Art: Ursus Wehrli Deconstructs Iconic Paintings

How a neat freak with a penchant for humor retells the art history of the world.

When an art critic talks about deconstructing a painting, they’re normally talking figuratively — pick the concept apart, dissect the symbolism, analyze the message. Not the case with comedian-slash-experimental-artist Ursus Wehrli, who’s on a quest to deconstruct and tidy up art — literally.

The quirky Swiss takes famous artwork, deconstructs the elements it’s composed of — brush strokes, shapes, lines — and stacks them up neatly, altering nothing but the original’s spatial arrangement of those elements.

The product, of course, is nothing like the original — and completely original at the same time.

The idea came to him after observing a hotel’s meticulous room service, which would transform his stuff-scattered room into a tidiness mecca every day, sometimes multiple times a day. Like any artist, this pushed him towards an unusual association as he asked himself how Van Gogh’s famous “Bedroom” would look if the room service crew could get their hands on it.

That first moment of inspiration drove him to explore the unusual approach further. His book, Tidying Up Art, does just that with dozens of masterpieces, humorously and innovatively deconstructed.

Watch his TED talk as he elaborates, rather entertainingly and with a true gift for comedy, on the project.

Our favorite: The Jackson Pollock one, which was such a mess to clean up that Wehrli went all the way to the bare bones, simply putting the paint back in the can.

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Best of Election Season Innovation

Private confessions, citizen voyeurism, a shot at redemption, why it pays to have famous friends, and how graphic design changed politics forever.

In the year of the YouTube election, innovation in political communication spanned virtually every medium. As the big day is upon is, we look back on an incredibly tumultuous political season with our selection of the smartest, most revolutionary election-related ideas.

THE SAYHEAR PROJECT

In a political climate where the “get out and vote” message seems to be spewing out of everywhere (and rightfully so), it’s worth taking a step back and asking ourselves the simple question: Why are we voting today?

That’s exactly what design studio Gershoni did with their experimental sayHear project, which assigns a toll-free number to each of the 4 voting options – Obama, McCain, 3rd party, and non-voter – and invites people to call with the reason for their choice, then displays the results in a neatly designed interface.

You can hear all the confessionals on the project website, ranging from the fully serious to the giggles-in-the-background prank calls. Listen to one particularly funny one here.

>>> via BoingBoing

NYT’S POLLING PLACE PHOTO PROJECT

The best documentaries record monumental events that change the course of history. That’s exactly what The New York Times is out to do with their Polling Place Photo Project, the first-ever nationwide experiment in citizen journalism.

The project aims to create the largest photographic archive of the actual battleground of every presidential election — hum-drum polling places — capturing the richness and complexity of voting, a visual record of human behavior in that final stretch of choosing our political destiny.

You can already browse photos from this year’s primaries and caucuses, or upload your own. So don’t forget your camera today.

MICHAEL MOORE’S SLACKER UPRISING

Notorious filmmaker and whistle-blower Michael Moore made movie distribution history this year with his latest political documentary, Slacker Uprising, which became the world’s first feature-length film to launch as a legal free release.

The film, covering the filmmaker’s failed attempt to save the Democrats from themselves in the 2004 election by rallying people to vote with a grassroots tour of 60 cities in the battleground states, is above all a call to action in hope for redemption this time around.

(We covered it in detail here.)

WILL.I.AM’S YES WE CAN SONG

After Barack Obama’s New Hampshire primary speech in January, artist will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas got overwhelmed with the desire to prevent the “unfair, backwards, upside down, unbalanced, untruthful, corrupt” process of the last election. So he called up a massive lineup of celebrities to produce a revolutionary music video based on Obama’s speech. (We first covered it here.)

The video became the most-watched election-related video on YouTube, with over 30 million views across its various uploads, and set off an avalanche of buzz across the social web. It inspired an equally moving spinoff, the HOPE.ACT.CHANGE. project, which invites Obama supporters to upload images of themselves and rebuilds the video into a gloriously designed multimedia mosaic of them.

SHEPARD FAIREY’S OBAMA POSTERS

In January 2008, artist Shepard Fairey did what he does best to show his support for Barack Obama – he designed a poster.

Little did he know the 350 limited-edition PROGRESS screenprints would sell out in minutes, the HOPE print would go on to become part of the Obama camp’s awareness campaign, and the posters would become the most iconic images associated with this presidential campaign.

Here’s to the power of supreme graphic design and art direction.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

There were, of course, a ton of other tremendously innovative efforts. A few more of our favorites included the Obama social network; the efforts to give voice to those who are impacted by the American election but can’t vote, like the nation’s 29.1 million home-owning, tax-paying legal aliens or, you know, the world; the clever and tremendously amusing Things Younger Than McCain site-turned-book (which is funnier if you skip back through the archives); and the Field of Hope crop circle in Pennsylvania.

But what we really hope is that all this innovation is indicative of a greater cultural hunger for change. And as the 11th hour of this grand race is upon us, we can almost taste it.

So get out and vote today — and enjoy it. Your children will read about it in the history books.

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Don’t Click It

Why hover is the new click and how to undo 30 years of habituation.

The best of innovation usually involves taking something completely mundane and turning it into something completely different. Which is why we’re all over DONTCLICK.IT, a revolutionary interface that does away with web standbys like clicks and buttons, and lets you navigate in a radically new way with the mere position of your mouse.

The project was born out of an experimental idea that questioned the conventions of browsing behavior. Phase One, going on right now, invites the public to join in and explore the interface. Phase Two digs a bit deeper, analyzing users’ behavior within the interface to find out just how deeply rooted our browsing habits are.

The Button Lab showcases a few alternatives for the click — different mouse motions or a hover timer. And the Autopilot feature allows you to observe the first 20 seconds of browsing behavior of the 20,000+ site visitors — it literally replays their motions within the interface. There’s even a Mousecamp where you can get trained into getting the hang of clickless browsing.

The project has received multiple interactive awards — which is no surprise: Even though the site has been up for nearly 3 years now, it remains innovation unlike anything else out there. So go ahead, explore. Let’s see how click-hooked you are.