For my album cover I intended to target an audience of teenagers mainly female. The idea behind my album cover was the initial thoughts and ideas surrounding the youth of today’s generation. Many teenagers feel as though they are judged based on how they look versus what they have to say.  Many adults feel as though teenagers are irresponsible, hence the title of the album being “young dumb and broke” this applies the idea of how teenagers are portrayed within the media.

The front cover displays a long-shot, framing the artist perfectly in the centre, drawing the audience’s attention into the artist’s carefree posture and interrupted gaze, creating a visual characteristic of mystery for the audience to indulge.  The image of her is directly addressing the camera with her placed in the foreground, with an outdoor location in the background, keeping the mise en scene minimalistic, placing all the attention on her. This allows for a connection to be made with the target audience which they could define as youthful, beauty and a sense of carefreeness.  However there is a distorted sense of reality with the grain effect being added to the shots, almost blurring them slightly. The font used for the title is a handwritten effect with a white grained box background to make it stand out, the use of this font links to the youthful and docile representation of the girl in the pictures.

In the middle section the same theme is continued through the mise en scene and the youthful image is portrayed throughout.  The artist is wearing a white t-shirt with a denim jacket draped over her shoulders; the use of the white connotes purity, innocence and a sense of perfection which contrasts the name of the album, giving it a particular narrative.

The back panel shows a medium-long shot of the artist sitting on a swing, again implying an image of innocence and youth.

I can apply Richard Dyers (1979) theory to my work as it shows a representation of a certain demographic in a stereotyped way, showing teenage girls in particular as being beautiful and innocent, Dyer suggested the problem with stereotyping in this wat conveys values and assumptions that may hinder the audiences perception of the world and consequently their actions and behaviour. Also the two most blatant cultural myths that are invoked in the media are the standards of what beauty and femininity are in Western Culture.  Roland Barthes used the term myth to refer to the cultural values and beliefs that are expressed at this level of connotation. For Barthes, myth is the hidden set of rules and conventions through which meanings, which are in reality specific to certain groups, within my piece, targeting teenage girls and how the media present them in particular. The pictures for the album could be universally received as ‘beautiful’ and the artist could exemplify the typical idea of ‘beauty’ in that she has a symmetrical face, high cheek bones, full lips and good contrast in the colouring of her skin and hair, but she could only be seen in this way because we, as a society, have decided that she is through the way we stereotype this particular group, not because it is inherently so. She is also pictured in a very docile, non-aggressive way, with soft looking hair and clothing.