So here’s a thought I had yesterday.

If more and more albums are being purchased online, downloaded, and played on an mp3 player, without ever being incarnate in a physical product — which I think we can all agree is pretty much the case — then it also is the case that more and more people are only ever seeing album art shrunk down into a 30×30 pixel icon, like on the iPod. (It’s true that you can view it full-size in iTunes, but I would bet that most people don’t use that as much because a) it’s not automatic, and b) it takes up screen space.)

So my idle speculation is that maybe designers should start taking this into consideration when designing album covers? Maybe they should start thinking first about what their cover art looks like at 30×30px on an iPod. (A meaningless blob of color, much of it.) Which would make the task of designing album covers a lot more like the task of designing say, icons — something small and distinctive, that gives a unique visual identity to your product in a very limited space.

I’ll bet many album designers would not be very happy with this paradigm shift. It definitely seems to remove a lot of creative possibility. Nonetheless, I would think that it might be something people would want to start considering, in the interest of creating a successful design that makes the album visually stand out, even on the iPod screen. Sounds like it could be an interesting challenge…