Simple Layout vs Busy Layout.

The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper is one of the most recognisable album cover and is a good example of a successful artwork with a busy layout. The collage gives the audience a lot to look and an there is lots of little details that fans would take the time to look at.  Despite the busy cover The Beatles and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band are clearly visible being in the centre foreground. The white of drum also stands out against the multi-coloured background of the montage of famous people.

Similarly, Madness have a busy and full layout on their record Complete Madness. The inside folds is a double page college of objects, images and lyrics that relate to the band. There are also links to the fans through the band merchandise like the badges and stickers. This would appeal to the audience because fans who want to buy a compilation record of their hit singles would like the connection to the memorabilia and branding of the band. On the back there is also more insight to the songs with under the listed songs there are comments from the band members about their thoughts on the song and why they thought of the lyrics etc.

The album cover for The Vaccines' album What Did You Expect From The Vaccines? is very simple but very effective in the sense that it stands out. The white lettering of the band name stands out against the black background and the central image is the main focus of the cover. They haven't even taken up space to put the album title on the cover - however the use of just the band's name is very effective as it would stand out in the audience's mind. This is might be unusual for a relatively new band to not include their album name on the cover however this could be because of their genre. "The Vaccines" by itself could be them making a statement, the rhetorical question "What Did You Expect From The Vaccines?" is also quite a statement which links to their revival-punk style genre.

Although The Vaccines genre is not the same as the one we are trying to portray, I think the simple layout is very effective and an emotive, eye-catching picture can draw the audience when browsing through a shop or on iTunes.  

This is also an example of a simple yet effective digipak layout. There are only two photographs of Charlie Simpson in the pull-out the other pages are photographs and lyrics. It is a calm, easy-listening album so the simple layout of the digipak suits the music style.