Ranking Top Albums of 2002 by the Graphic Design
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- Опубліковано 10 чер 2024
- Today we examine the premise - does the graphic design of cover art correlate with the quality of the music within? Hat tip to the Internet's favorite melon - @fantano for raising the question!
0:00 Intro
0:38 Why The Year 2002?
1:07 Methodology
2:01 Scoring Begins
4:10 Avril Lavigne - Let Go
5:35 Britney Spears - Britney
6:29 Cam'ron - Come Home With Me
7:48 Clipse - Lord Willin'
8:36 Coldplay - A Rush of Blood To The Head
9:15 Creed - Weathered
10:26 DMX - The Great Despresison
10:47 Eminem - The Eminem Show
11:26 Hoobastank - Hoobastank
11:45 Incubus - Morning View
12:32 JAY-Z - The Blueprint
12:57 Jennifer Lopez - J.Lo
13:24 John Mayer - Room for Squares
14:56 Linkin Park - Hybrid Theory
15:44 Ludacris - Word of Mouf
16:54 Nelly Furtado - Whoa, Nelly!
17:20 Nickelback - Silver Side Up
17:43 No Doubt - Rock Steady
17:55 Pink - Missundaztood
18:24 P.O.D. - Satellite
19:13 Santana - Shaman
19:40 Staind - Break The Cycle
20:06 System of a Down - Toxicity
21:03 The Strokes - This Is It
21:18 Toby Kieth - Unleashed
21:36 Vanessa Carlton - Be Not Nobody
22:01 Results
#albumart #2002 #tierlist
All background music by Harris Heller - streambeats
/ @streambeatsbyharrishe...
21:12 That album cover for The Strokes is actually a series of charged particle tracks in a what is known as a bubble chamber. This was used to detect new kinds of subatomic particles after collisions from an accelerator, and was used extensively in the 60s and 70s. They've just increased the contrast on the original image and I think it works quite well.
That's really cool - thanks for sharing that interesting tidbit!
@@LinusBoman Really great video. I think the Strokes international cover for Is This It was better though.
It's so boring compared to the ass pic cover
Fascinating! This makes me like it more than the other one tbh. I guess people just wanna see B U T T S.
@@nvrndingsmmr Plus a glove on top is also what people want.
I will watch every single year if this becomes a series, great video!
Haha, thanks mate!
THIS
Yup. Me too! Great videos!
Me too! This was great!
11:49 "You can almost see the wallet chain attached to it" it's amazing how you can encapsulate an entire genre with one mental image
Such an underrated joke
Every day Linus hasn't blown up reminds me that our time in purgatory isn't over yet.
You're too kind! As if we needed any more reminders! 😂
It happened
Ha-ha-hard disagree on SOAD's Toxicity. Yes okay the red 'Toxicity' title itself is awful, but the photo being gross and bleak is exactly the point.
The band grew up in and around Hollywood and the album deals with urban decay, drugs, prisons, political unrest and their music is often inspired by people being crushed by the entertainment industry, so making a disguising version of the Hollywood sign is perfect. The fact that you thought POD's Satellite cover was better somewhat blows my mind :D
Yeah he has great taste overall but his SOAD and P.O.D. ratings were just absurd. P.O.D. is unambiguously a D and SOAD should be at least a B.
He just hates the Hollywood sign and I think that influenced how he rated SOAD too
@@rattyeely This 100%
Yeah, the title is pretty dogshit but the rest of the cover fits the album pretty perfectly.
Yeah, he hates dirty/ugly/grungy design. No coincidence that Coldplay got the first S. The KORN album got an undeserved C....
The capital "A" is because it's a play on words with the musical term... "A minor" as in Alicia was was still relatively youthful (technically not a minor) and "A minor" as in the musical key (which notes are always represented in capital letters).
Exactly! Also... "songs in a minor" is just very unclear (and possibly up for misinterpretation?)
it still looks yucky tho 🤧
Toxicity doing some heavy lifting for the D tier
And By The Way
I can't get over that POD cover getting an A. The glow around the members' body should be automatic C
The System Of A Down album cover is iconic!
damn it.
yea, I don‘t think it‘s as bad as he said. It works well as an album cover, thus it became iconic. Aside from the toxicity-type, it‘s crafted quite nicely. It portraits the right message and tells a story not just about the album but also the bands history. Design shouldn’t just be rated by visual details. This cover fulfilled its purpose.
@@hirnfaser7245 agreed
It also came out in 2001???
I would swap the RHCP and Santana album covers, I think those ones clearly came down to subjective art taste than and particular design principles. Great video though!
Something I can never not do when it comes to handwriting in artwork like this is to look out for the same character to see if it is indeed actual handwriting or a font and that Pink album cover with the two S's next to each other really hammers home that it's just a font. For something that was always going to be seen by a lot of people I can't help feeling that's just laziness on the designers' part. Surely, writing out the title by and and digitizing it wouldn't have been too much effort?
And then why apply a transparency effect if it's supposed to be real paint?? Confusing.
@@yuotueb real paint is rarely 100% opaque, like often when i see graffiti buffed out it's still pretty visible under the coat of paint
I can’t get mad at most of these placements but system of a down is the best execution of that grungy style by far. B tier at least
21:04 this The Strokes album art is a bubble chamber image of subatomic particles. Probably either from cosmic rays or from a small piece of a radioactive material.According to the band's manager, the frontman phoned him before the Japan and Europe release and said, "I found something even cooler than the ass picture.". The cover art in some parts of the world was the nude form of Colin Lane's then girlfriend
In most parts of the world, afaik it was changed only for the american release for obvious reasons
Damn it, Toxicity is a phenomenal album. I always thought the artwork was fairly good
It's easily SOAD's best.
I like Steal This Album.
I don't even care about design and still i watched 3 hours worth your videos in a row. That is what a good, no, a great channel does to you. Very well done.
am I the only one who actually really likes Avril Lavigne’s “Let Go”....? I just feel like it was really perfect for the type of vibe she was going for with the album. could have picked a slightly better font though I agree
You're not alone my friend.
I disagreed with his take on it. It's a good cover!
Yes, it fits the vibe very well, but it's dine poorly. As he said.
You could make shorts reacting to death metal logos. They're the pinnacle of legibility. I know, because my favorite band is KGX}V&MW¥SY9R4
That's a really good idea! Although I think that strongbad beat me to it in the early 2000s! 😄 Still might give it a go!
I like the logos of Nokturnal Mortum and Dark Fortress.
@@LinusBoman Would watch the hell out of that. Metal's got some amazing and amazingly awful album covers. Rip into the art of my favorite music, please!
"Only linus on youtube with smooth segues"
Them's fightin' words
Swap Santana for System of a down and I think you’re about right. The Santana album may be something that someone with skill has spent a lot of time in but it doesn’t matter, it looks like a cluster of awful noise.
SOAD on the other hand, while it has all the grime and imperfections, seems purposeful in its execution. It’s not hard to look and is unlikely to induce a seizure at first sight (unlike Santana’s album cover).
Wow, hard to believe this video is now 20 years old, amazing growth Linus!
Enjoyable seeing your take on these albums. The only one I somewhat disagreed with was the one you remarked yourself was subjective, which is the Red Hot Chili Peppers one, but difference of opinion is the spice that makes the world more flavourful. Really enjoyed this video, cheers.
My thoughts exactly, but said much better than I could
Yeah that was a bizarre take given how reasonable he is in the rest of the video. He didn't even give any critiques or feedback, just "it's bad." I get that art is subjective, but at least back up your take with some kind of reasoning otherwise why are any of us even here?
Man your videos are so entertaining, well-researched, and also really soothing to listen to. In a very turbulent climate with a lot of bad news it is just really nice to listen to a professional chat about graphic design for 20 minutes. Thanks Linus, very cool.
Aw man, I was hoping you’d like the By the Way cover, it’s definitely my favourite cover ever, it goes hand in hand with the music perfectly imo. Also, it didn’t appear on this list but I’d like to hear your thoughts about the Songs For the Deaf album cover by Queens Of The Stone Age :) really enjoyed this video man :)
One of the things that makes that album art so good is that it was hand painted by John in an avant-garde style. And outside of the coloring the lettering stroke is fantastic.
@@aceroy9195 painted by John? I thought it was Julian Schnabel, the father of John's girlfriend at the time?
By the way is one of the best album covers of all time, he just does not know what RHCP was going for at all
Weirdest thing was saying that the person who made it clearly wasn't a good artist, when it was painted by a guy who has had his art exhibited in some of the top contemporary art galleries in the world.
I love that cover so much as well!!
I found out about your channel just a few days ago and this might be the best discovery I make this year. My comment isn't specifically about this video but about all your videos in general.
I'm in love with typography and love seeing videos like the ones on your channel. I was shocked when I saw you were only at around 3000 subscribers. This is content I'd expect from very big, high budget channels!
Keep up the great work! I hope way more people find your channel and learn about design (especially type ;))
Enjoyed that a lot, you should do more years. Its great to get nostalgic about old albums and get to analyse old design.
boosting this channel as much as i can, your videos are fantastic. keep going!
I'm binge-watching this channel on a Saturday after finishing a mood board for branding work. It's good to discover you. Love your content Linus.
I’m an artist and a music fan, always been interested in album art. Happy to stumble across this video, and your channel. subscribed
Your videos are surprisingly well thought out. I'm super pleased to have found this channel.
I would say, design wise, my favorites are :
Incubus - Morning View (11:45) Simple yet very effective. I don't get the hate on Arial ?
Linkin Park - Hybrid Theory (15:00) Really stylish without going too heavy on the effects
Santana - Shaman (19:13) I mean.. yeah, that's just beautiful.
Korn - Untouchables (14:35) That sepia outside glow on the title is weird but it helps for readability, and i like the fact that they choosed to put the band name in the back, on the illustration.
I like the Coldplay (8:36) and Hoobastank ones (11:26) , they still feel pretty modern, but i hate the font they choosed.
And about that System Of A Down cover art for Toxicity (20:06) I don't know man, i kinda like it. It's gross yet it catches the eye, the editing is weird but you cant say that its really badly done. And to me, the drop shadow on the already distressed title make it more impactful.
Musicaly wise, my favorites are Korn, Linkin Park and System Of A Down !
Do more years, that would be great ! Analizing the different trends and styles for each era, i'd watch that !
shitting on basic fonts is so stupid. I never understood it. Comic Sans is a perfectly fine font for comics, just because it is misused by all kinds of people doesnt mean the font is bad.
Arial and Trebuchet are basic fonts but they work well. Especially Trebuchet is nice as it isnt as common as arial and still has enough character.
It's just shitting on standard fonts for the sake of it
I find it a bit embarrassing that one of the most successful movies of all time (Avatar) uses “Papyrus” as its title type.
It's a heavily modified Papyrus and imo looks pretty good.
I still cannot believe that an album as brilliant as Nas’ Stillmatic has one of the most God awful covers I’ve ever seen.
At least King's Disease II is better
It's strange to judge an album solely by it's graphic design. Surely the aim of each cover is to tie into the themes and atmosphere of the music. System of a down's toxicity may seem poor technically, but it's the cover's cohesion to the absolutely disjointed, revolting, maniacal tone of that dime of an album that makes the cover a success.
I don't think you can rate album artwork without considering how well it represents the artist. Although not particularly aesthetic, that Kid Rock album artwork is a very accurate representation of the artist. Also, that No Doubt album should be top tier.
You definitely can. While the representation is a key aspect, you still can judge the actual design objectively. And he DID rank the No Doubt cover pretty highly.
@@ninja_tony Well yes, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. As someone who is actually a graphic designer, I can tell you that one of the biggest factors in considering if a design is successful is if it suits the context. The context being the medium, the target audience and the product/service it is representing.
That is really the biggest difference between art and design.
I agree, this is a decisive flaw in the concept of the video.
The author also seems biased, a handful of covers were severely misplaced.
Why try to find a correlation between the cover quality and the musical quality without knowing what is the intention of the artist? Surely there are many cliché cases, but when you don't know you will fail at crucial times.
Why use as quality metric a mix of professional critics ratings and random user ratings? Why mix it with top selling lists? Isn't the popularity a rating? He should have made it separate or at least establish a popularity vs critics correlation before the cover ratings. Or even budget correlation.
Also highly biased font-wise: it does not matter the font, what matters is how you use it.
It's obviously just a bit of fun. The "methodology" provides a bit of a carrot to wait till the end. A breakdown of one album cover in detail along with the music might be interesting. But unless he spent a year solid making the video there would be no way to do a 12-month review like this with the degree of rigour you are asking for.
loving all of your videos, spent a good few hours just flying thru them!! i'd love to see you repeat this video but with the most highly rated/best selling albums of 2016, if you do decide to go for a round 2 :) keep up the class work!
Best channel discovery in a while. Keep up the great work! As a software engineer, I'd love to learn about the history of monospace fonts for programmers and, more specifically, ligatures in modern fonts.
Glad I found this gem on UA-cam. Great content.
I' ve started to watch your videos just recently and when I decided to sub to you I couldn't believe my own eyes! Only 3k subs? Keep up the great work and you will soon reach your well deserved 3M mark!
The level of quality of your content is incredible. You clearly know a great deal about the topics you speak about, and have an excellent style of communicating them. I don't know a thing about graphic design, nor have I taken much of an interest in it before, but I've watched a half dozen of your videos after finding your channel earlier today. Keep it up and 6 figure subs will be in your near future, even though the subject matter is niche.
"...cause I'm the only Linus on youtube with smooth segways" that LTT roast came out of nowhere and was BRUTAL
Another epic review!! you should consider documenting this in a form of an actual book. the 90s era should never be forgotten . thank you for your amazing production!!
I'd honestly love to see a video comparing the top 10 albums of each decade (1970s through to 2010s perhaps?). I'd be very interested to not only see how the font trends progress through each decade but whether album quality improves for the best of the best.
Oh, yeah, it would a terrific video!
The SNL Papyrus Avatar short relates deeply with this! Great vids, man!
that's a quality content you have here sir, I wish you lots of subs in the nearest future!
The Toxicity cover is great. Classic album art. Great album.
You have the niche art/digital/pop culture style i love. Subbed!
You should do the same take with movie posters and videogame covers / posters :D Really enjoyed this nostalgia trip!
Just FYI, AVGN did something similar for video games, but he is no designer, of course.
Just found your channel from the American phsyco video, keep up the great work 💪
Great video Linus! Really interesting!
Another great one! Keep up the good work!
Cheers Thomas!
I feel like the Nas cover is iconic in how strongly it embraces the now outdated stylistic choices, even down to his outfit. Also the Clipse stencil typography is iconic
Great video, loving this channel. I am going to need you to make a full video justifying your A rating the POD album cover lmao
Hey there Linus! Musician here...@ 3:47 you question why the A is in capitals but to me that makes perfect sense from a musical point of view.. When a track has a tonal centre you would normally hear somone say it's in 'G' major or 'Bb' minor.. its a play on words in that case which does make sense in my opinion.
It doesn't take away from the fact that I think it's a rather bad play on words that isn't really accessable to the general population because the vast majority of people who listen to music aren't actually musicians..
Just thought I'd point that out man.. anyway your videos are the nuts man!! You've got some really good content!! 💯
This is my favourite channel UA-cam has gifted to me in my recommendeds in a very long time!
you should review the best "pen & pixel" album covers. they were a studio who designed a TONNE of southern hip hop album covers in the 90s-2000s, and they had an extremely recognizable style.
Man I loved this video! It's a really fun premise, even if you dunked on many of my favs jajajaja
Loved the video, my only feedback is that you shoudl say what ranking each gets for all of them as it was hard to track where some of them end up!
Let’s jump forward a decade and try 2012
I would have loved to see the results on a graph at the end, did you use a spreadsheet or similar to compile data for this video that you could share?
This really took me back! I had all these indie/numetal/metal albums and some of the hiphop albums in the list. And I'm not ashamed to admit that!
What's the font used in this video? It's pretty nice looking, and honestly I'm surprised that a channel about design isn't listing its fonts in the description :P
Bro you look so young!!! 2002 was the year I got into 1st grade goddamn.
I would gladly watch this as a series. Very interesting!
Please continue this! Would love to see your opinion on Franz Ferdinand album covers
Commenting for the algorithm before I watch tomorrow!
1991 would be a cool year to see, lot of great albums
+1 for 1991!
Love the sass, great stuff.
yeah bro, do every year from 1960-now, and every genre by decade. your channel will be even more massive
if you did every year, would i watch it? absolutely. but to start it'd be amazing to do 2012, 1992, 1982, 1972, and 2022 after the year is over. also could be fun to look at bands/artists specifically, especially throughout time. or genres? idk but I love your channel Linus! amazing
@7:40 the font works so well because it's very fluid yet angular which matches her pose very well
Love This!
Definitely watch more of these
cool concept. only cc: would be better if you said the tier out loud, it starts to get hard to see which tier you rated the cover. Subbed tho!
Hate to "well actually" you, but actually there very much was raytracing in 2002, especially considering the technique has its origins in early 1970s. Doing that logo in CG was very much feasible in 2002.
I would add it almost certainly was done in 3d (including a repro of the curtains) and then massaged in Photoshop to better integrate it into the background photo and cleanup the lighting
@@pr0ntab I don't kow for sure, but that would be my guess too.
One of the biggest hip hop fans but whenever I see an old hip hop album cover I often shit myself with laughter
Mind you, can you get a better album cover than Liquid Swords?
@@liquidgeorge true but that doesnt count as old to me but also yeah love the art work
@@Vivacomunismo I’d argue that 26 years is pretty damn old for a hip-hop album. Are you talking more The Great Adventures of Slick Rick?
@@liquidgeorge im thinking more the start of the genre but yeah I guess I failed to communicate my bad
Awesome channel. Can you some day make video on the numerous design changes Coca Cola Zero has gone through since its inception.
Okay I love this!
Should have ranked the good "Is This It" album cover!
You're my favorite graphic design UA-camr, and the only one I actually watch, but I've just gotta say, I can't believe you thought Cam'ron - Come Home With Me uses Arial.
Hah! Fair - that C is definitely not Arial. To be fair, the metric ass-ton of grunge brushes may have clouded my judgement.
Thought the Red Hot Chili Pepper one was kind of bizarre. In almost all other ones you note that the style is subjective but the execution is good, but in that one you really only discuss the style. Then on the Sanatana cover, assert that whoever painted it was clearly talented, unlike the Red Hot Chili Peppers artist, which is also way off as that one was painted by famous contemporary artist Julian Schnabel, and whether or not you like the painting there's no denying that he's someone who knows how to paint.
Toby Keith cover looks like a cheap comedy movie. Like Ernest In The Doghouse or Paul Blart Dogcatcher or something. That Creed cover made me cry out in pain. That should be a criminal offense. Sting’s Trebuchet and the insert shot of the guy trashing the tv was a hoot. Pod had an OK composition but the logo was trash. It could be salvaged with some extra work. Art nouveau girl should have been fully illustrated, could have been good.
need more of this
Please do more of these please
I love watching your review methods, especially when you roast the covers.
Glad to hear. Thanks Kris!
Dude, you're so underrated!
By using the average (mean) for each category, the results may have been more affected by outliers. What would the comparison be if you used the median instead?
16:28 you skipped talking about a few albums in the M-L area, like 3 or 4! And I was keen to hear what you had to say about Michael Jackson’s “Invincible” too…
I'd love for you to do this with progressive rock covers as they are usually extremely well done (although lacking typography for the most part), however some entries look god awful.
Anyone know which episode or video Fantano talks about At The Gates/the papyrus stuff on?
What’s your thoughts on the Lÿno font?
I was literally just watching an LTT video before this so that Linus reference was definitely appreciated.
What you've got here, is a quality product, keep it up fam,
it would be cool to see som from different decades
The Boman and Needledrop crossover I didn't know I needed
Do some classic albums! You should make a video like this but for albums from 1967.
The Strokes cover is a photo from a particle physics cloud chamber. The curving paths are the particles that are affected by a magnetic field, the straight paths are particles that aren't. These are always black and white, it's just been recolored.
You're really good dood
Dude that clipse album cover is classic…
Please please please do a video about Reid Miles' stunning designs for the most well known Blue Note albums. I would love to see your take on his work!🙏🎷
i remember album graphic design being VERY questionable in 2013. There were a lot of wood effects, holographic embossing and painted type. I'd be really interested in a video about that year!