What are the key features of CD covers?

Generally CD covers include these points:

• Name of the artist
• Name of the album
• An image
• Colours
• A theme
• Any parental guidance labels if needed

However, it depends on genre to decide which of these feature are included. For example, pop artist albums usually have an image of the artist on the front, whereas heavy metal albums normally have a particular image of something else (something dark and scary).

One famous example of an artist that went against all these conventions was "The White Album" by The Beatles. The front cover was literally just white with no image, no artist name and no album name. This caused a lot of controversy, but became one of the most famous and inspirational album covers of all time.

Whatever is on the cover, all abums must follow a theme as otherwise the cover would be unattractive and confusing. The theme usually relates to the artist and the genre the artist falls under.