Bear Vs. Bear

The two things that I am going to be comparing and contrasting are the first two album covers from Kanye West. The names of the albums, respectively, are "College Dropout" and "Late Registration." The first of the albums is "College Dropout," which was released on February 10th, 2004. This cover has a picture of a man in a full on bear costume right in the center. The bear is sitting in the first row of bleachers of a gym with his head down, showing that he must be a dropout. The banner around the part of the cover with the bear in it is gold and look to be leaves around a wreath. An interesting part of this album cover is that nowhere on the cover does a person see Kanye West's name or the title of the album itself. The second of the albums is "Late Registration." In this cover, the same bear is in the middle of an open doorway with doors that look like they are to the entrance of Hogwarts. There is a spotlight behind the bear to show the significance of him coming back to school. There is a chandelier in the top and middle portion of the cover; however, there is no banner or anything like that to bring more attention to one part of the cover. I think that the spotlight in the background does that for the bear. Finally, in this cover Kanye's name and the name of the album are both present.

There aren't really a good amount of similarities between these two album covers. The main part of the covers are similar though. The bear is present in both, which is quite odd that Kanye chose to make the figure a man in a bear costume rather than just standing for the picture himself (personally, I think its because he never even showed up to his orientation for college). Another similarity between these two covers is that each has its own way of bringing all the attention right to the bear, even if that wasn't already done. The cover of "College Dropout" does this by creating a banner around the bear sitting on the bleachers. The cover of "Late Registration" does this by having the spotlight come through the Hogwarts doors right onto the back of the bear, creating a shadow that basically makes the bear look badass.

There are also a good amount of differences between these two Kanye album covers that makes them unique. The first =main difference is that in "College Dropout" it doesn't say Kanye West, the name of the album or the Record Company at all. On the other hand, "Late Registration" has all of these elements clearly visible except for the Record Company, which is listed on the back. Another difference is that there is no banner present on the cover of "Late Registration" to bring attention to the bear. The final difference is that in the first cover the bear is very upset and in the second the bear is making his triumphant return.