The Mental Harmony of the Music Creator and the Audience in Music Album Cover Signs and Compositions in Iran

The difference between images and music is visible and invisible potentiality of them. Changing this difference to similarity is an important factor to make the album cover of the music everlasting. The emotion that music creates in the listener cannot be described by the language unless its internal forces are visualized. To invite the audience to buy a music album, it is necessary to transform the musical form into a visual one. Also, the interpretations of the creator of the music and the audience are based on the mental background of each of them, but the graphic designer is responsible to coordinate these two. This study investigates the types of visual sign and compositions that designers use, and we have also sought to examine the harmony of the two audio and visual arts in order to maintain a more lasting sense of music in Iranian society. Without this type of investigation, the ineffective images are dominated on the cover design of the music albums and it confuses the art music audience. The questions being asked in the study are what kind of signs does the designer use to coordinate the mind of the creator of the work and the audience? What compositions does he/she use to achieve this alignment?
The research method was descriptive in the literature section of the documentary research and for the extraction of the signs and methods; we used descriptive field finder method. The purpose of this method was to study the relationship between the visual signs and compositions of the music albums covers and their effects and to report data extraction without any interference and inference of the status quo. For this purpose, 154 CD covers from the years 2000 to 2019 of Iranian traditional music, western classical music, rock, jazz and electronic released in Iranian Music Market were collected by easy sampling method and they were easily accessible for research purposes. Then they were analyzed by Gardner theory. An examination of the subjectivity and ways of changing the audience's mind showed that music artists use methods such as 1) evocative 2) associative 3) imagination to sustain their effect on the audience's mind. Evocative manner is reminding of an event in the listener's mind to a genuine recreation in the enclosures of his mind that drives the musician into a state of flux.
 The results showed that designers in Iranian traditional music have used more than 60% of the signs, and in western classical music nearly 50% of the audience has used signs rather than conventional ones. The results show that designers, as can be seen, are 80% familiar with Iranian classical music and more than 60% with western classical music. These signs are more familiar to the audience because they have more interactions with these styles. Nearly 70% of Iranian classical music has been using descriptive method, but in western classical music both the descriptive and the recovery method have been used relatively. 72% of Balancing and 80% of Single-Cone Composition have been used in the cover of Iranian traditional music albums. But arrangement, calmness, and consistency are less frequent, and designers tend to use more attraction and rhythm and give less attention to other elements. As a result, these compositions only account for 73% of their album covers. While traditional Iranian style of music is unique to Iran, and designers should strive more to make better covers. Studying the covers of rock, jazz and electronic albums show that designers have used more conventional signs. About 71% of designers use conventional signs, which is unknown for the audiences. Cover design should challenge the mind of the audiences. In this situation, the audience's mind acts like a white tablet on which the designers record their favorite image. The best way for designers is to make a sudden attraction by using asymmetric and complicated combinations, and this method has become very common these days. Asymmetrical and complicated compositions are mostly common. Visual elements are very low in music expression and they only care about traction and rhythm and the least attention to height of sound, which is very applicable in the cover design of this type of music has been paid. The designer in this style is more in a state of obscure imagination with ambiguity, while making the audience think about it.
Generally, it is the task of the designer in the process of introducing associative music to form the content of the musical work and then to associate it with the audience for the album. But the results showed that the designer was only somewhat successful in Iranian classical music.