After Hours - Album Cover Design for The Weeknd

After a brief analysis of the artist’s songs and album covers, I could determine a common theme used in most of the covers: the accent of a red backdrop or red font. This styling is due to the colour red’s global recognition as a colour representing a wide range of emotions, which his work emotes. The artist Weeknd is known for composing R&B and soul music. His songs often consist of meaningful verses, life, and social struggles. Weeknd is most popular amongst millennials and Gen Z as they have a significant cultural connection with those generations.

One of the main guiding factors for this album is the red colour accent which acts as a visual cue for his songs as the album is about a self-loathing evil-loving villain. One of the primary visual elements used is a contradicting portrait of the artist separated by a visible tear on the album cover. The contradicting images are a calm, cool-looking guy and an evil-blood-spilling hero. The contrasting nature between the personnel mentioned above is the album’s base storyline, which led to the design of contradicting portraits for the album cover.