#which is a bit of projection but ultimately thoughtful and considerate so you cant fault them for it

[whiskeyswifty]

Oh thank god, I thought I was the only one who hated the new cover lmao

you and i are not the only ones but DEFINITELY in the minority. i'll say i don't hate it, and i like a lot of the components! the photo obviously is so striking. how happy she is, mid laugh and hair in the wind. curly hair!! it's a great photo that makes me grin when i see it. i also really love the sharpie-style typography! i think it's a really clever way to stay within the aesthetic, but avoid the copyright infringement of doing it in her original sharpie handwriting. very rough and ready, diy, with the look of a Hand Crafted Human Touch, which is a very interesting way to visually portray a very synth heavy album lol. i love that contrast and that insistence that despite it's pop genre, it's a very raw and open album.

its the technical execution of it that really rubs me the wrong way. simple things like the light on the seagulls comes from the top right, and the light on her face comes from the bottom left. thats like.... art composition 101 shit. not to mention the very odd seagull photoshop job where seagulls are in focus way more than they should be for how proportionate they are to her. they should be much blurrier for how far they are, especially given the grain. and then the general composition is just.... awful. she's both too big and too small at the same time, and the album title is also too big and too small. it's this weird noncommittal size that covers her a little bit? but it's crowding the cover and fighting for real estate and attention with her photo, which is a layout issue. it creates a tension that is really frustrating. it's okay to give some more of that blue negative space for it to breathe so it has the breezy look the cover is trying to evoke.

I think the components actually look awesome in other formats, like the IG story and here:

this is nice and balanced here, her and the title of equal height and we got a thirds situation going on, with the title occupying 2/3, as it should since it's the point of interest. and then she occupies 1/3 as she should as the complimentary image. soooooo pleasing to the eye and very legible design, you know where to go first and then second.

i love so much of it's individual pieces, i'm just soooo frustrated with it's layout choices. i totally get that i'm just being super nit-picky with it and most swifties don't care at all and that's totally fine. 2 of my friends texted me this morning to gush how much they love it and that's great! I'm just really picky when it comes to this stuff, but it's nice to know that me and some of my other buddies on here share the same frustrations with it!