Visual Language: Album Covers

Visual Language: Album Covers

by | May 5, 2020 | elp, ELP Highlights, Exploring Art, Exploring Art Highlights, Grade 10, Grade 10 ELP, IGCSE Archive

Visual Language: Albums

I still recall the very first English lesson I had in my last year of middle school, where my teacher asked us a very curious question. Could a piece of music be a text? 

The word ‘text’ is tricky. Even the word ‘art’; people enjoy assuming the word means ‘paintings and stuff’. But there is a strange sense of solidarity between writers, painters, composers, sculptors, poets and playwrights, that they are all creators in their own right. They are the creators of thoughts inside other people’s heads. 

Is it right that we call this ‘art’? Or is ‘text’ a better word for it? 

It doesn’t help that whenever we create presentations, the options are divided between ‘text box’ and ‘image’, even though an image might be considered a text in the first place. 

By my 8th grade English teacher’s definition, a text is anything that can be interpreted. 

We can interpret images, sure we can. Images can create thoughts in our head just as well as words can, perhaps even better, hence the saying ‘a picture is more than a thousand words’. We have videos to accompany our music, advertisements lining our streets, covers on the front of our books, cartoons for our children in our homes. 

Visual language is a funny term. After all, language is auditory. It makes me picture that whenever someone talks, the words that they’re saying fly out of their mouth in 3D letters, dissipating into the air afterwards, as if we were walking subtitle generators. But we forget, does language have to be in words? Does art have to be in words? 

How did we form such a bias towards writing? 

So in the spirit of teenage angst, I’d like to look today at a few album covers. This is an excerpt from the full analysis. You probably won’t have seen these, since I’m bringing in K-pop – that’s right, Korean music album covers. (I’m a teenager, spare me.) 

Gender, Power, and K-Pop Albums 

There is ALWAYS a connection to gender. It doesn’t matter where you look, gender expectations are so ingrained into our society that we barely realise the connotations our words have. I find it quite surreal that some of us get twinges of discomfort whenever males are given the adjective ‘pretty’. 

But still, here are some quite recent albums, one by a boy group, one by a girl group. It’s quite obvious which is which. I am not saying this because of the colour scheme. I think we’ve moved past that and there are enough K-pop girl group album covers with the colour blue in them.

 

First of all, I’d like to point out the shiny gold lettering in a cursive script on Everglow’s cover (the girl group, for their 2020 album ‘Reminiscence’), whereas the sans serif all caps on Oneus (pronounced won-us, for their debut song ‘Valkyrie’ in 2019). I have noticed that a lot of girl groups and female artists enjoy using cursive or serif lettering (not ALL), and that male groups very much enjoy sans serif all caps. Is it a strength thing? Is it a power thing? I think it could be, since male K-pop groups tend to go for more powerful concepts, especially with songs. Fast-paced dance tracks are a common staple amongst boy groups, accompanied by some impressive choreography that is often a lot more physically strenuous than girl group choreographies. This is reflected naturally within the album cover. 

Not to mention, a lot of the girl group albums that I was looking at feature explicitly the members of the group, whereas boy groups tend to use other visuals, logos and heavy branding. This is NOT true for all boy groups. Some boy groups that like to feature their faces (sometimes) include Seventeen, NCT and some GOT7 albums. Some girl groups that don’t always feature their member’s faces include Red Velvet, 3YE and some Apink albums. However, there is a general trend that girl group albums are more likely to feature the artists’ faces. 

Interestingly, in the past, it was very common for K-pop artists to put their faces on the album cover. (I say artists, it’s really the company branding them, which is a whole new topic). 

An exception to this trend is in solo artists. Regardless of the gender, male and female solo artists display their faces on the covers of their albums. Perhaps this is because of advertising, that it’s easier to edit their faces on there. However, a much more plausible reason is the phenomenon of ‘group culture’ in K-pop. Groups are much more popular than solo artists, and one of the first questions many K-pop fans ask each other is ‘who is your bias?’ which is essentially ‘name your favourite member’. There are even stereotypes within each group for fans who bias specific members. Fan culture is centric around groups, so solo artists have to stand out in their packaging and put their brand out there to build a stable fanbase. 

‘Boy Group Culture’ is also an obvious phenomenon. Boy groups rise to higher levels of fame. Reasons for this may be because boy groups have ‘fangirls’, that is, the majority of their fanbase is women. The trope of a ‘fangirl’ is well known, even amongst Western artists. One girl group member even remarked that they thought solo release showcases on Korean TV (entertainment companies reserve entire broadcast sections for that group and their release) was only for ‘privileged boy groups’. All of this may mean that the girls feel they have to show their faces on the album covers to stand out.

This links perfectly into the ridiculous standards for women in K-pop. For women, their appearance has a huge weight on their marketability. Boy group idols have even remarked that they never faced the same pressure as girl group idols to lose weight and look good. An insane amount of money goes into styling for girl groups, so that they look perfect. The plastic surgery industry in Korea is massive. Therefore, girl groups broadcast their ‘perfect’ appearance on the album cover.  

 

However, there is a new trend rising in K-pop – a concept we like to call ‘girl crush’, or the equivalent of ‘girl power’.  These are more powerful concepts for girls, with hard-hitting baselines and more difficult choreography. It’s perpetuated by many well-known groups such as Blackpink, as well as a rising 4th generation of artists such as ITZY, Cignature and Weki Meki (all bringing a new, electronic sound with interesting harmonic clashes. Interestingly, these clashes are ‘unnatural’, but still sound good and make their way into popular music, which is an obvious statement of ‘I’m unique, and I know it’). 

 

The first of the two albums I’ll examine here is one of my personal favourites, as the cover for CLC’s digital single ‘Me’ released in 2019. It uses clever multi-language wordplay, the English for ‘me’ and the Chinese for ‘mei’ (which means beautiful) which is the character that is sideways written in the red brushstrokes on the album. Korean lyrics in the chorus translate to ‘Beautiful me’. The song itself not only explicit in its lyrics, but also in its sound. It’s powerful, and the notes don’t always work together – but it’s still catchy, and musically complex. 

The album cover, then, is bold, yet feminine. The strokes of the character, seemingly done in red marker, serve as almost a warning against those who question their ‘beauty’. The fact that it’s in multiple languages illustrates that they’re confident, that no matter where they go, they’re beautiful. It’s tilted horizontally on the side, I think, as a statement. They aren’t the norm, they aren’t ‘right side up’ but they’re still beautiful. The simple ‘Me’ in all caps is powerful yet simple, and the blank space beside it shows that they don’t need anything else but themselves.

The second album cover is also from 2019, from a group called ITZY (pronounced it-zee), and the song ‘Dalla Dalla’ (meaning ‘different’ in Korean) is all about standing out and being proud of your uniqueness. The bright pink that clashes with the red clothing they’re wearing only serves to highlight their difference, but also their confidence. There’s pink lightning across the cover (girl power, very literally) and the slogan above their name for the title of the album even reads ‘IT’z DIFFERENT’ which combines their group name in a very natural association with their pride to be ‘different’. 

I also find it quite interesting how they’re sitting on the floor. Usually, camera shorts would be looking UP at them to place the viewer ‘below’ them, creating an image of dominance and power. However, ITZY’s album is not like this. They’re rebelling against that, ‘different’ once again. It also seems as if the viewer is looking down upon them. This might refer to Korea’s extreme beauty standards, and their confidence is literally ‘blocking out the haters’. Sure, they’re sitting on the floor, but they look better than you ever will sitting on your floor. 

I have much more to talk about, but I think I’ll save it for my IB Extended Essay. K-pop’s diaspora has grown, and with it, trends and ideas and ambitions too. I hope this was interesting for you. Stay safe, stay healthy. Thank you for reading! 

The Short Story Medium and the Purpose of Writers

by | Apr 29, 2020 | elp, ELP Highlights, Exploring Art, Exploring Art Highlights, Grade 10, Grade 10 ELP, IGCSE Archive

The Short Story Medium

What I find particularly special about the short story medium, is that it’s more practical and accessible than a novel, but still fulfils the same purpose as one. I also find that sometimes short stories are much easier to understand than novels are. Perhaps it has something to do with the general lessened attention spans of our generation, so that we can only keep focus for the first 500 words or so, or the fact that we find more short stories online than novels (and our understanding of writing on a screen trumps that of our ability to flip through the pages of a book). Perhaps those two things are related. 

 

But I digress. 

 

As a (somewhat) aspiring writer, short stories are much easier to wrap my head around structurally than a novel. They not only take less time to write, but also less time to plan and edit. One can still make good use of all the devices within a ‘writer’s toolbox’, structure, narrative, tone, character, yet within 1000 words. This also, however, has the odd effect of adding even more meaning to each word in a capitalist sort of way, since there’s less of them. Each word counts. 

 

And I find that I quite like that. 

 

Short stories take less time to analyse than a novel, too. You have the time to swim through the connotations of each and every word. Unlike novels, where there are hundreds of thousands of words to analyse. (This, however, does not take away from the overall meaning and impact of a novel. I respect novelists a great deal, for their patience especially.) But short stories can be infinitely more accessible.

 

Should a writer be explicit with their purpose?

In my opinion, this defeats the purpose of writing and literature entirely. It’s proven impossible to tell others what or how to think. Allowing people to create meaning for themselves is proven to be the most effective way of impacting someone. It is the dialogue between a writer and reader that gives the story it’s meaning. Without a reader to interpret it, writing is meaningless. 

 

After all, it’s shared thoughts and pure need that created language in the first place. Language’s inherent nature is in its use – if a word is no longer used, then it loses its meaning (such as the word, ‘betwixt’. Who uses that anymore? It’s meaning has evaporated from the public consciousness, and may as well be considered lost). And words must be spoken, written or communicated from one person to another, that is how they are used. There needs to be at least two people in order to properly use the word and allow it’s connotations to reach the mind, which is exactly why a writer and a reader both create meaning, together. 

 

I have asked many writers at the book launches and forums I’ve been to, “Do you write your story with the intent of what meaning you want to create from the very beginning, or does the story just come out of you?” 

 

And a lot of writers have said that it’s both. They have a vague idea of what they are really saying, but are also invested in telling the story. That is what is important. And all emphasized the importance of readers. Without the reader to give interpretations and to associate connotations, the purpose of the story falls flat. Associating meaning is also a personal task. Those thoughts evoked inside a reader’s mind are what writers aim to create. The reader must create meaning from within their own heads from reading, and the writer facilitates that. The power to evoke thoughts and emotions is what makes writing so powerful. 

 

Not all writers know what exact meaning/concept they want to evoke. This is the reason why all of our theses for papers can be different, because there’s a special subtlety conveyed within each story. Not to mention, everyone would still interpret words in a different way. It would also be extremely boring if a writer just stated, “This piece is about the inevitability of people extending their judgement on everyone, even themselves,” because that only narrows the piece in its scope, but also removes the aspect of the reader figuring it out themselves, and therefore believing in the story. And even with a sentence like that, people would still find different interpretations, such as focusing on the harshness of the self on, well, the self, or as Marshall has also conveyed, blaming others based on limited evidence. People will naturally interpret things differently, so what’s the point of trying to be straight up? Allow their minds to run wild. It’s often a lot more fun that way, and people gain a lot more out of it. 

 

And when a reader creates their own meaning, the story becomes so much more believable. The reader gains the added satisfaction of ‘figuring it out’ as well as seeing perhaps another universal truth about humanity they had not considered before. Such is the beauty of language. 

 

And all I’m left to wonder, is how humanity can commit such atrocities (genocide, destruction, atom bombs) but manage to create something as complex and beautiful as language, and use it daily. This is the human condition. And this is why we have art in the first place. 

 

A sincere thank you for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful day.