Paradise

The above image come courtesy of one of my favorite bands, the Dresden Dolls. Painted in 2005 by Barnaby Whitfield, the image was used for the band's live concert DVD, The Dresden Dolls: Paradise. The cover does a marvelous job conveying the flamboyant, dramatic stylings of the artsy, "punk-cabaret" duo. The colors used are also fairly effective- all white, rouge, and smoky orange. The palatte is very suggestive of the fire burnings of Dresden, Germany (from which the band takes their name) and the Weimer era cabaret (conveyed by the circus tent and mime- makeup adorning the band members). The placement of the bandmembers serves well too, with both singing to eachother, or about to kiss, in a theatrical fashion.

The rule of thirds is used nicely in a horizontal manner, with the band member and their circus sandwiched and framed by an upper and lower dark space. I thought that this added to the thematic quality of the cover, along with the other elements, making almost look like a poster for a movie or play, not like most concert videos; there looks like there is a story and plot hidden behind all the pancake makeup and rouge.

I liked the placement and font of the text on top for the fact that it placed the names of the duo above their respective images and the band name, making it look even more like a film poster. I thought the text at the very bottom was effective in grounding the image and balancing out the top. The color of the text worked really nicely with the black border, however the text that intersects with the white figure in the center starts to get hard to read because of the similar colors.