More Album Covers I Like

My friend Katie reminded me of some more album covers that I like so I thought I would do another post on that.  I'll feature four more today and tell you why I like them!  Oh, and you can see the first installment right here.

First up... one of the ones Katie recommended, This Moment by Steven Curtis Chapman.  I like both the music and the design of this CD.  The graphics are so cool, though.  Very unusual, but excellent color-wise and creativity-wise.

First off, I really like the texture of the background.  It looks like watercolor, which fits with the brushstroke-like feeling of the rest of the design.  I love how this designer redefined what "watercolor" means.  Usually that means soft and quiet and low-key, but this design uses the watercolor style in a completely cool way.  The typography is great, too.  I love the font, and the color and pattern on the type is an interesting touch.  The water splash thing in the upper left is a neat touch, too.  It provides a third section of watercolor-ness (the other two being the type and the picture of Steven Curtis Chapman), and it also looks like Africa, which I think is neat because Africa is mentioned in one of the songs on this album.

Next up, a cover of I CD I haven't heard.  It's by Leeland, and I'm honestly not that familiar with their music.  There is one song of theirs that I love, but besides that, I haven't really explored the rest of their stuff.  I would like to, though.  Anyway, here's one of their album covers, to the album Sound of Melodies.  I really love the design of the cover.  Wow.  This is some pretty great illustration work.

I love pretty much everything about this CD.  The colors are neutral and not overpowering, but at the same time, not boring.  They're bright enough to be eye-catching.  The waves are drawn with great precision.  The cityscape is ultra-cool, and I love the silhouette.  The paper airplanes are so cool - I love the doodle-like feeling, but the fact that they are still exact and precise make them still look professional.  The texture over the whole cover really brings it together and gives it a nice, rustic feel.  The only thing I'm not totally sold on is the trees.  I'm not sure I like the tree "skeleton" on top of the circles.  It's not a bad idea; it just seems to stick out against the rest of the design for some reason, at least to me.  Not totally sure why.  But, oh, the typography!  I adore the typography.  I'm not sure of this, but it looks pretty similar to one of my favorite fonts, Adobe Garamond Pro.  And the white space is good, too, especially around the text.

And the last one is an old favorite of mine music-wise.  I love Hope Rising by Fee.  The graphic design is well done, too.

The thing that especially sticks out to me is that Fee actually has a distinctive logo on their album cover, which not all bands do.  I don't think every band necessarily has to have a logo on their cover, but I like that Fee does.  The starry night kind of feeling to the album cover is nice - simple but interesting.  I like the golden tones at the top in particular.  I also like the simple, unassuming font of "Hope Rising."  I'm not that crazy about the almost galvanized style of the type, mostly because I love typography so much and I find it hard to see it out of its "natural element."  But I agree that the style of the type totally fits the design.  And it does look nice against the starry night background.

What do you all think of these album covers?  And do you have any other favorites?  I'm open to doing a part three sometime if you have other ideas. :)