Hypnotic Eye
By Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers has been making music ever since the mid-70's. With the release of their self titled album in 1976 with hits like "Breakdown" and "American Girl".
Hypnotic Eye is one of the albums with a very strong psychedelic cover, as many of his other cover had photography of Tom Petty and/or the members of the band on the cover. When I first saw the Hypnotic Eye cover, I didn't really practically like it and I still don't. The graphic taking most of the cover is a giant eye sore with the use of primary colors and the use of positive and negative space; which helps create the movement.
The title of the album is larger then the bands name. Which possibly means that only fans of the band would have known what the album looks like and bought it. The song titles are also smaller, but they are also on the cover instead of the back. But no matter how hard I try to read the song titles, my eye is always drawn back to the graphic. I can never truly focus on something else without my eye being drug back down to the graphic. The image make complete sense whenever I look at the back cover with the graphic repeated on the television screen; being the only source of color in the image besides the primary colored side.
The back cover is a possible remark on how children are being raised in this generation. With mindless watching of technology and without really thinking truly on one's own.
Even though it is an eye sore to me and I can live happily without ever seeing this cover again, I am glad that the designer of this cover took a different approach to the cover. It is conceptual, with a possible story of today's generation. As previously stated, it's not an album with Tom Petty's gorgeous face on the cover. So the effort of the design is nice.
http://static.stereogum.com/uploads/2014/08/tompettyandtheheartbreakers.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d8/Tom_Petty_Wildflowers.jpg
Hypnotic Eye is one of the albums with a very strong psychedelic cover, as many of his other cover had photography of Tom Petty and/or the members of the band on the cover. When I first saw the Hypnotic Eye cover, I didn't really practically like it and I still don't. The graphic taking most of the cover is a giant eye sore with the use of primary colors and the use of positive and negative space; which helps create the movement.
The title of the album is larger then the bands name. Which possibly means that only fans of the band would have known what the album looks like and bought it. The song titles are also smaller, but they are also on the cover instead of the back. But no matter how hard I try to read the song titles, my eye is always drawn back to the graphic. I can never truly focus on something else without my eye being drug back down to the graphic. The image make complete sense whenever I look at the back cover with the graphic repeated on the television screen; being the only source of color in the image besides the primary colored side.
The back cover is a possible remark on how children are being raised in this generation. With mindless watching of technology and without really thinking truly on one's own.
Even though it is an eye sore to me and I can live happily without ever seeing this cover again, I am glad that the designer of this cover took a different approach to the cover. It is conceptual, with a possible story of today's generation. As previously stated, it's not an album with Tom Petty's gorgeous face on the cover. So the effort of the design is nice.
http://static.stereogum.com/uploads/2014/08/tompettyandtheheartbreakers.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d8/Tom_Petty_Wildflowers.jpg
