I was heartened to receive a lot of responses to last week's column on album art. It's clear that many of us link our favorite cover designs with our favorite music, which is understandable since we tend to judge many forms of art holistically. In the days of full-size albums, at least, it was almost impossible to disassociate the content of the music from the content of the cover art.

In last week's column, I also asked you to send your favorite album covers to gene@creativepro.com. You obliged with terrific examples of wonderful designs, but keep 'em coming (no smaller than 450 pixels wide and no larger than 1200 pixels wide). I realize that few people have scanners large enough to scan an entire album at once, so please feel free to use your digital camera and do the best you can. For any materials larger than 8.5" x 11", I tend to use a copy stand and a digital camera set on macro.

Remember, I'll choose one person at random and give that winner a customized assortment of Scanning Around with Gene material.

Contemporary, But Not Adult Contemporary
As promised, this week's column features my more contemporary albums. It's been difficult for me to define categories, so I’ll start with a couple of my all-time favorites, like these from Devo, Santana, and the Talking Heads. The texture on the Fear of Music album is terrific and is one of the great album cover designs ever. Click on any image for a larger version.

And how can you not like these from the Residents, the Cars, and Elvis Costello?

The Ramones are one of my favorite bands, and I love all their album covers. But I’m a big fan of photographs of the artist, so I’ve selected a variety to show here, including the album End of the Century, when the band got new hairdos and a new producer named Phil Spector.

Go to page 2 to see albums from The Who, Peter Frampton, The Beatles, Steve Martin, Joe Jackson, the Fifth Dimension, Grace Jones, and many more.