Would Sgt. Pepper's be exactly the same without Peter Blake's cover ? At a time when full-length records do not mean much any longer and album covers even less, I found interesting to make a website on sleeve design. Long before videos, record covers were the visual embodiment of music, a way to put images on sound. I remember having spent hours as a teenager detailing the cover of records while listening to them. Later on, I realised that some of them had things in common in their design, revealing either a mere sign of the times or a more deliberate connection. Some records even obviously copied famous sleeves, as a tribute or as a mockery. Here is a collection of record covers I came across, which share some common visual features.

Curly hair and sunglasses












Ian Hunter

Overnight Angels (1977)

Richard Ashcroft

Alone with everybody (2000)


From San Francisco Bay











Big Brother and the Holding Company

Cheap Thrills (1968)

Various

Kya: 21 Golden Gate Greats Vol.2 (1969)










Fat Tuesday

Califuneral (1992)

Pond

Man it Feels like Space again (2015)


Objects of cult














Metallica

Master of Puppets (1986)

Various

Overload: a Tribute to Metallica (1998)

Hewhocorrupts

Master of Profits (2003)


Underwater













Argent

In Deep (1973)

Nirvana

Nevermind (1991)

"Weird Al" Yankovic

Off the Deep End (1992)













Catherine Wheel

Chrome (1993)

Moodswings

Horizontal (2002)

Jeanne Cherhal

L'Eau (2006)













Foals

Total Life Forever (2010)

Marvin Hood

Nevermind (2011)

B-Tight

Born 2 B-Tight (2016)