Bastard 

Album covers tend to be an overlooked form of design. The Grammys only just created a category in 2026 to highlight the best album covers of the year.  The crossover of music artist and designer is something that tends to be ignored and overlooked. While lots of music artists have designers that work on these covers, some tend to be a huge part of the creative process and or are the creator of the album cover themselves.  It is important to understand the crossover of designers and music artists, in this day, one cannot fully exist without the other. 

This design was used for Tyler, the Creator’s debut album: Bastard. The album cover shows a picture of young school children lined up in what resembles a school picture. The photo is edited to make the children have scary or uncanny faces, drawings on their skin, and text overlaid on their clothes. It then has a red hue on top, making the image more “demonic” or “evil.” On top is the word “BASTARD” in white text with a light blue outline, which nicely contrasts the red on top of the children. The typeface used is Cooper Black, which is a font that is often found on free font websites and is available for commercial use.