Whether we're on iTunes or Spotify, browsing stores (both online and off) or watching advertisements on TV or in magazines, it's safe to say that admiring album cover art is a part of daily life for many of us.t As long as music exists, the album design industry will thrive, regardless of how we listen to music. Painted Covers Believe it or not, a high percentage of album artwork is painted, using both analog and digital media. Iron Maiden: Best of the Beast Iron Maiden is well known for its detailed album covers. Black Light Burns: Cruel Melody A truly fantastic piece of art that works great as an album cover. Ladyhawke The cover for Ladyhawke's self-titled album was produced using watercolor paints. This cover proves that it works with album art, too! 2Pac: Until the End of Time This 2Pac album cover is a skillfully painted portrait that works really well as an album cover. Coldplay: Viva La Vida A wonderful and fairly well-known album cover. This is one of the only album covers in this showcase that has no digital input whatsoever. The Flaming Lips: Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots A great cover that uses simple painted techniques to really let the viewer's imagination run wild. Jerry Goodman: Ariel A really great piece of album art that has a superb retro feel, with a high level of noise and subtle texture. Terry Snyder and the All Stars: Persuasive Percussion Volume 2 A really cool album cover. Lew Davies and His Orchestra: Two Pianos & Twenty Voices As well as looking great, this cover is clever: on the left side are black lines, representing the two pianos, and on the right are 20 circles, representing the 20 voices. This combines lines of different weights and circles with a great minimal color scheme to really grab the attention of viewers. Muse: The Resistance You have most likely seen this cover before, not only because it is for a top-selling album but because it got a lot of attention in the design industry. Add 2% of Uniform noise and click "OK." Select the Elliptical Shape tool. Select the Elliptical Shape tool again, and draw out a new shape. By playing with simple shapes, you can create some really interesting artwork in minutes! Select the Polygon tool from the Tools panel and, while holding the Shift key, draw your shape. Keep copying and pasting the shapes until you end up with something like this, making sure each shape lines up perfectly: Eventually, you should end up with a whole canvas full of polygons. Now remove some of the shapes until you're left with a collection of polygons in the shape of yet another polygon. You can get some great color schemes from COLOURLovers. You should end up with a nice little pattern like the one below, which took only a few minutes to create: Photography-Based Covers Photographic album art is possibly the most common style today. Below is a showcase of great photography-based album art, followed by a hand-picked selection of guides, showcases and full-length tutorials on photo editing and manipulation. I personally think it's great, and it works incredibly well as an album cover. The Van Buren Regulars: 14 Minutes 'Till 3 This cover uses height to get a perfect bird's-eye shot of an incredible vintage spiral staircase. Nirvana: Nevermind An hugely famous album cover by the great Nirvana. Story of the Year: Page Avenue A really clever cover that uses a bird's-eye view of what looks like an industrial complex or suburb. Retro and Vintage Covers This category showcases a selection of covers that have a vintage and retro style, making use of different typography techniques, texture/noise and illustrations to produce some great results. Pixies: Doolittle This vintage-style cover art uses rust textures (and plenty of them) with strong noisy lines and faded photographs to produce an awesome result. Take It Back: Rumors of Revolt This simple yet great illustration against a textured cardboard background works really well. Riverboat Gamblers: To the Confusion of Our Enemies The limited color scheme of this textured cover has shades that were common in the early and mid 20th