A.C.T. — Today's Report
The Art Corner was a series of articles by graphic artist Mattias Norén, who was part of the DPRP team and designed the layout we had at the time. In this series, Mattias reviewed the artwork of albums. The series started in January 1999 and ran for about 18 months.
The original introduction of the series is included below and will tell you what it was all about. This category no longer runs, so information about submitting an album for review has been removed, but we're keeping the archived articles as a separate series in the Features category.
Check out Mattias Norén's company website: ProgArt!
Dear visitor of The Art Corner!
Some people say that it's just the inside that counts, but I'm actually one of those men that cares much about the outside as well! :-)
The Art Corner only concentrates on the outside. What I think about the inside, the music, I'll keep for myself in this case.
Each album has been given 1 to 5 points in seven different categories.
- Design / Composition: Is the idea and layout good?
- Technical skill: Is the artist good at what he is doing?
- Connection to the music: Is the artwork inspired by the music, album title and the lyrics? Does it feel good to look at the cover at the same time you listening to the music?
- Logotype: How good is the design of the logotype?
- Typography: How good is the typography? (cover and backcover)
- Booklet: How good is the typography, artwork, layout and paper quality?
- Disc: How good is the typography, artwork, layout on the disc?
Mattias Norén
A.C.T. — Today's Report (InsideOut Music / MTM - 0681-02, 1999)
Design
Artwork by Peter Asp and Norbert Kusch
Photos by Tomas Johansson
Scores
| category | score |
|---|---|
| Design and composition | |
| Technical skill | |
| Connection to the music | |
| Logotype | |
| Typography | |
| Booklet | |
| Disc |
Score: 3.0
Comments
Covers with the band members on it often tend to be boring and uninteresting. This cover shows that you actually can do good covers with a band photo. The members of A.C.T. are very interested in films, so they did their artwork like a film poster. Great idea, but I do think some people will think that it is a soundtrack from some film. I also think that the film poster idea could have been done in a better and more striking way.
The logo is very good. It works perfectly with the kind of music the band plays (similar to Saga or It Bites).
The typography could have been better. I think they have used way too many fonts. I also don't like that they haven't numbered the tracks on the back cover. The label print is also not very tasteful. It is in white and a sharp blue colour that cannot be found anywhere else in the artwork.
Conclusion: not a bad artwork, but the music is of a much higher quality. Hopefully they can improve their film theme for their next cover if they decide to continue with this concept, and I really hope they will.
