Journal Entry 8: Sublime album covers

I first heard Sublime's Self Titled album in 1996 soon after it came out and have been hooked ever since. I have all three of their original albums, and the first two of their posthumous albums. In this post I am going to look at three of Sublime's album covers. First I will look at Sublime's first album 40 Oz. to Freedom, next their Self Titled album, and finally their first posthumous album Second-hand Smoke. I mentioned this in my post about Propagandhi's albums, and it also rings true with Sublime, their logo changed constantly with all of their albums and promotional merchandise.

I'll start with Sublime's first studio album 40 Oz. to Freedom. The typographic layout for this album is very clean. The use of only black and white for the text gives it good contrast against the background. Not only does the type contrast with it's background, but it also contrasts with the image. The sun image is very busy and colorful, the simplicity and lack of color of the type contrasts well with this. The use of a script font for the title helps to unify the type and the sun image. Some of the curvy lines of the script font echo the curvilinear lines in the image. Emphasis is given to the band's name by placing it in the black bar. If the designer had not done this, or made the name any smaller it would have been overshadowed by the image.

Next we have Sublimes most popular, "final" studio album, it is a S/T, released shortly after the lead singer Bradley Nowell died of a heroin overdose. I say "final" because there have been a bunch of compilation and live albums released since then. I really like the type treatment on this album. Tattoo styled text on album covers is quite popular, but but not many bands actually use a photo of one of the member's tattoos. The tattoo style is often really busy and crowded, the simplicity of this is a welcome change. If his back were covered in ink, it would have distracted from the name/title and ruined the whole thing. On a non-typographic note, the way the black and white foliage frames the picture is superb. It also helps to camoflauge that pesky parental advisory well.

The final cover I will look at is their first posthumous album entitled Second-hand Smoke. This contradicts everything I said about simplicity, but I believe the busy layout works well on this cover. This is done in a graffiti style which in most cases is very busy. It's interesting that the designer chose to frame a photo with an illustration on this album also. Although the cover is very busy, the band's name stands out very well due to it's large size and bright green color. Another curious fact about this cover is that it does not have the actual title on the front of the cover.