New and Notable: Alphabeat

In October 2009, Danish pop group Alphabeat released The Spell (right), their second studio album. Fans outside of Denmark have been waiting for the album for months. AlbumArtExchange user henZ uploaded the album cover to the gallery last November and I’ve been looking for it to appear in U.S. and U.K. online stores ever since.

The album art is pretty good. It features a color photograph of the group with the focus on female singer Stine Bramsen. The typography appears above the group in white lettering on a dark blue sky.

The U.K. version of the album is now scheduled to be released tomorrow. Bramsen tweeted about is a few hours ago, “Our album is out tmrw!? Wow!! What a big day, didn’t even realize until now that it’s the 1st of March tmrw! Go get it and do enjoy!”

For some reason, the title of the album was changed from The Spell to The Beat Is… (probably some record label craziness involved in that). Unfortunately, they did more than just change the title on the album cover. They changed the color of typography to a nauseous pink.

Just comparing the two covers is a lesson is why chosing the right color for typography is an important aspect of album cover design. The pink color ruins the whole look of this cover. The eye is drawn away from the image of the group and to the harsh shade that is hovering above their heads.

When I finally download this album, I am going to change the name and use the Danish artwork instead. Thank goodness it was uploaded to the gallery. Thanks, henZ!