In addition to food, drink, cars, and type, music probably rounds out my five favorite things ever. It's been a huge obsession since the first CD (remember those?) I bought — Ace of Base's "The Sign" (I'm not proud of it). From there, I've been through all kinds of phases.

Beginning with the aforementioned Swedish foursome and their brethren, moving on to chart-topping R&B, then of course rocking flannel to "alternative" radio in high school, to digging up underground hip-hop in college and now settling into what could arguably be the high point of modern music — a democratized, endlessly varied, no-excuses landscape in which major labels have no stranglehold and the increasing ease of discovering good bands.

One thing about being obsessed with design, you end up noticing things based on their "cover" — be it books, music, clothing or food packaging. Luckily, instead of disappearing along with the compact disc, album art seems to have found a nice little niche to hang on to in the form of vinyl records. With digital copies becoming the norm, vinyl has the advantage over CD of feeling somewhat like a collectible format. Something with a little bit more substance, durability and quality. The art is big enough to be displayed and being hard to skip tracks, it really embraces the album format holistically — forcing the listener to just sit back and let it play from beginning to end.

Album art has a lot of interesting qualities — how it was conceived, how it relates to the artist, it's connection to the album, and just plain aesthetic value. Here are of some of my favorites.

What do you think makes a good album cover?

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