The Two Sides of Fame

Personally, I absolutely love Lady Gaga. I enjoy her music, and she is an outstanding person. She is extremely creative and eccentric, and intelligent. I respect her as an individual and she is someone to definitely look up to. (You don't necessarily have to dress ridiculously however :P) For these reasons I scavenged for reasons on how I could realate her to design. It's actually pretty easy, but overwhelming. From her outrageous fashion to her music videos, Gaga's sure has a plethora of design aspects she carries. But I shall keep it simple as it would surely make your head explode as well as mine.

Lady Gaga came out with her first album 'The Fame'
I won't get into the nitty gritty on how the songs on this album relates to Fame
itself, but I can assure you she has underlying tones of fame in her music. She
wouldn't have called it 'The Fame' for nothing.

I wonder how useful those sunglasses are..

Above we have the cover art for 'The Fame'. What I personally pull from this is that the diamonds on the sunglasses signifies luxury, an aspect you may or may not run into when you acquire fame. Of course we have Gaga wearing these sunglasses. These could have just been set on a table and been the cover art. Artists and Bands are not always on the cover of their own work. But significance of Gaga wearing them is that she is walking into the door of what we call fame. I deduce this since this is her first album, and she isn't famous yet. So she is on her road to it, whether she follows it correctly or not will determine her fate.

From design perspective her face is centered and nicely bordered by her hair, a jewel (disco stick?), the highlight of her hoodie, and the red type at the bottom. The red text really pops out at you since there aren't many intense colors here. The Fame text is nicely placed on the sunglasses and somewhat reinforces my idea.
I also would like to note I don't necessarily feel my concept in paragraph is actually correct, it couldve just been "Oh this looks nice, lets use it".

Now onward to..

..The Fame Monster

A huge change in tone from 'The Fame'. The coverart shows no jewelry or "luxries" that seemed apparent in the last cover. As the title suggests, we get a sense of dread and darkness.  Monster could stand for the deluxe compilation of the 8 new songs she introduces and the entireity of the previous album, or the downsides of Fame. I like the second better. Even though "Fame" didn't have alot of color going on,"Monster" is just completely monotone, creating an entire different feeling you get if you had seen it in color. It also strengthen the Gothic style we feel. Another cover for "Monster" shows this even more.

It's almost unsettling.

Both covers reflect on the change of tone in the music presented on the album. It's darker, still dance, pop, but the overall tone is just vastly different. I feel as though Gaga is showing she has reached her Fame and has it, but it comes with its consequences and she reveals them in her music.