Ranpitsu

What pictures like Surrogates show is that there’s no substitute for a compelling story. Much of the awkwardly-titled Surrogates’ marketing time was devoted to establishing the context and setting of its near future world where humans live their lives through robot surrogates, from a trailer that started as a commercial (a la ads for The Island and others) to billboards of models with parts of their robotic skeletons exposed. However, relatively little time was devoted to the story, characters and action, which were left vague and nondescript. Given the volume of other like-minded movies, the robot or avatar premise alone does not possess the wow factor with audiences, and, lacking a clear connection to the real world, served only to disconnect Surrogates from moviegoers.

The demise of the record cover has been under way since the arrival of the music video, followed by the shrunken canvas of the CD. Today, the album cover is just one of a dozen requirements for the successful marketing of music. The most important activity for the modern record company is getting artists onto magazine covers or into hit TV shows: the album cover is just one of many surfaces to be filled, no less or no more important than any other. Cover art will survive, encouraged by small independent labels and bands who crave a visual expression of their music. But as far as the major labels are concerned, if they could avoid spending money on record sleeves they would do it tomorrow.

The Coldplay cover, with its intriguing puzzle and uncommercial design, is an almost nostalgic statement of graphic simplicity. It can be viewed as a neat commentary on the death of the old record industry, but in the future it is more likely to be seen as a last hurrah for sleeve design and the notion of record covers as shared generational artifacts.