Coldplay X & Y CD album cover

This is the album cover for the Coldplay album called "X & Y". When you first look at this you think what is the object or thing in the middle of the album cover, so when I first looked at the cover i thought it was a bomb type thing that could of related to one of the songs in the album, but this album cover has more to it than first meets the eyes.

I think the target audience is to people aged between 16-24 the young age sort of audience would like this as one the music is their sort of thing and the art on the cover could relate to them and stick out to them in away. This coded image on the cover is related to one of the songs which has a secret hidden parlitatical message with in the piece its self.

The only technique I can think of that would relate to this sort of work would be that of photoshop or another program on a computer that could do imagery such as that. The only typography on this CD cover is the albums artist who are Coldplay and the name of the album "X&Y".
This has to be one of the most effective ways of portraying a message as in the album it has the alphabet for the code on the front cover which if the audience takes the time to look will get what the imagery on the front cover says.
With this work I really do like the idea behind the artwork but in the end its not really artwork as its more of the english side of things as the alphabet is in this image that it is trying to portray.