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.

Red capital letters














Elvis Presley

NBC TV Special '68 Comeback (1968)

Falco

Emotional (1986)

Morrissey

Who Put the M in Manchester ? (2005)


Blue boat








Echo and the Bunnymen

Ocean Rain (1984)

Motorama

Calendar (2012)

Geometric face











Soft Machine

Seven (1973)

Various

Barry 7's Connectors (2001)

Kuedo

Severant (2012)