sleeve design: July 2008

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)

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