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.

Run the Voodoo down








Miles Davis

Bitches Brew (1970)

Acid Mothers Temple and The Melting Paraiso U.F.O.

Son of a Bitches Brew (2012)

Living room








Ray Conniff, His Orchestra and Chorus

Hifi Companion (1966)

Morcheeba

Big Calm (1998)

Dobro in the clouds








Dire Straits

Brothers in Arms (1985)

Brewer's Droop

The Booze Brothers (1973/1989)

Fog and vegetation








The Frames

The Cost (2006)

Arclab

No Spectre (2007)