The College Dropout

Before the album had artwork, Kanye West had already taken pictures of himself dressed as the Dropout Bear, the mascot who would follow him through his early records. Eric Duvauchelle, then part of Roc-A-Fella's in-house design team, picked the shot of the bear sitting alone on a set of bleachers.

Duvauchelle was drawn to the loneliness of the scene in what is supposed to be "the most popular representation of a school." He framed the photo in gold ornaments taken from a 16th-century illustration book. West wanted those flourishes to "bring a sense of elegance and style to what was typically a gangster-led image of rap artists."

The idea continued inside, where the booklet is laid out like a college yearbook with childhood photos of the featured artists. The original release used a brown background, and later remasters switched to white. The College Dropout was released on 10 February 2004.