12", 12x12

October 14, 2013 6:27 AM

Yep, another clever way to play with iconic album covers. Reducing them to 12x12 grid- one pixel per square inch of the original LP.

Extra points for figuring lo-fidelity puns for each title. I'm fascinated by how much the color matches drive my recognition of these.

posted by bendybendy (12 comments total)

Graphic Nothing did this with dots, not squares. I bought a print of Abbey Road that seems to be unavailable anymore. [edit] Nope, still There.[/edit]

I also bought a Mona Lisa from there. That's still available, and way more recognizable.
posted by DigDoug at 6:46 AM on October 14, 2013 [1 favorite]

I was half hoping these would be heavily-pixelated reductions of the album covers, rather than redrawings of them using heavily-saturated video game colors.

Well done, just not what I had in mind.
posted by ardgedee at 6:49 AM on October 14, 2013

Png Crimson. Clever titles.
posted by Devils Rancher at 6:49 AM on October 14, 2013

all graphics must be 32 pixels by 32 pixels
posted by griphus at 6:54 AM on October 14, 2013 [2 favorites]

It's one of those days where checking the links becomes easier and more rewarding with my specs off.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:54 AM on October 14, 2013 [1 favorite]

Extra points for figuring lo-fidelity puns for each title.

Except for Vector Underground which seems a bit off to me. (Vector art is about as different from big blocky pixels as you can get). Love the concept and the post though!
posted by crazy_yeti at 8:04 AM on October 14, 2013

I would have liked this better if they had provided a small icon version of each one too.
posted by aught at 10:53 AM on October 14, 2013 [1 favorite]

I only recognised Abbey Road and Velvet Underground. Both are older than I am. Am I missing something or are album covers just not as iconic as they used to be?
posted by swr at 2:03 PM on October 14, 2013

I think it is less that and more that pop culture isn't as much inundated with album cover imagery -- or, rather, that the imagery mainly got stuck on what we consider 'classic rock' -- and genre-exemplifying bands are necessarily rare. You only get so many Sgt. Peppers and Dark Sides of the Moon and Neverminds and Pretty Hate Machines and so on per generation.
posted by griphus at 2:22 PM on October 14, 2013

Also, from my days of selling band t-shirts at the punk rock store, there's a lot of iconic album imagery for genres that never makes it out into pop culture at large, but is still easily recognized by anyone who is into that particular genre.
posted by griphus at 2:27 PM on October 14, 2013 [1 favorite]

Album covers nowadays are all the same, in that they all look like small metallic rectangles in your pocket. Unless you're talking about that little thumbnail image that occasionally pops up on %MUSIC_APP% while it's buried beneath sixteen other windows. Understandably this is not the stuff of cultural milieus.
posted by forgetful snow at 2:43 PM on October 14, 2013

The Who's Next entry is actually pretty amazing: apart from the wet spots it conveys nearly the same information as the original.
posted by George_Spiggott at 6:14 PM on October 14, 2013