- Tony Bennett said of the marvellous album covers of the 50s that, when you bought a record, “you felt like you were taking home your very own work of art”.
- A landmark artwork that first attracted mass attention in America was the Capitol Records design for Nat King Cole’s The King Cole Trio album. Nat King Cole showed that cover design was going to be a massive cultural influence; it was one of the few mediums which reached millions of people in the golden age of radio.
- A host of renowned artists, including Andy Warhol, Roger Dean and Burt Goldblatt, kick-started amazing careers by designing album covers.
- "The artwork serves as a portal into what the listener can expect from an album, and even what kind of musician lies behind the creativity. Strong album covers make a statement, because after all, this imagery is an opportunity to make the right first impression."
- "The artwork serves as a portal into what the listener can expect from an album, and even what kind of musician lies behind the creativity. Strong album covers make a statement, because after all, this imagery is an opportunity to make the right first impression."
- "Before the Internet, music could only be purchased on a physical format, and therefore, packaging and the presentation of an album was paramount in ensuring its commercial success."
I remember the days before prevalence of spotify/ apple music etc, and for ages I didn't have a smart phone so I used to buy CDs. I shopped for these in hmv/ zavvi/ charity shops/ cex, where there was no way to listen to any of the music before you bought it.
I would often buy an album based solely on the cover art - even if I hadn't heard of the artist, the visual language used in the design could communicate to me what the music may sound like. Album artwork is important as it can comunicate to a viewer what the music sounds like/ its general vibe.
Music holds a lot of cultural significance; certain movements such as political or sociological ones often have songs/ albums / genres associated with them. The album artwork then also becomes associated with these movements and can communicate ideas through its reproduction onto t shirts, posters, even tattoos.
Eg.
Malcolm Garrett -
Garrett designed a lot of iconic album covers in the 70s & 80s. He used bright colours and geometric shapes to incorporate movement into his work. Garrett's work is considered to hold cultural significance.
The White Album - Richard Hamilton
"I thought it looked boring until I studied art. Once you understand the context, it gets really interesting. We think of design as for the present moment, but while music doesn’t change, people’s feelings and relations to it do. So the sleeve becomes a reflection of that."
"A few years ago, this guy had a record shop selling nothing but old copies of the White Album. People had drawn on them, made coffee cup rings on them or whatever and each one was different, because it had lived a life."
Aoxomoxoa - Rick Griffin
"It felt as if everything could be different. The musicians were making new worlds. I was obsessed with designing the future, but the graphic designers of the day were hardwiring it into our existing culture with their decades-old design and fonts. That’s why Rick Griffin’s cover had such a powerful effect on me"
"At my grammar school, you displayed your allegiances via the album you carried under your arm"
Unknown Pleasures - Peter Saville
"it’s one of those images that has always been about. When I was younger, I didn’t know what it was or understand it, but something about the graphic always appealed"
"there’s no band name or text, so no marketing or conventional enticement. It has something akin to the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey about it, like a communication from somewhere unknown. It’s mysterious, dark and self-contained."
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