sleeve design

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 book


The Durutti Column Valuable Passages (2-cassette box set) (1986)	Radiohead Amnesiac (limited edition) (2001)	The Durutti Column Chronicle XL (Box set) (2014)

Hair bun profile


Valerie June Pushin' against a Stone (2013)	Malia Black Orchid (2012)

Painted daisy skull


Archie Shepp The Magic of Juju (1967)	James La Petite Mort (2014)

Disabled


Limp Guitarded (1999)	Leslie West Guitarded (2004)

Cadillac light tail


Ry Cooder, Manuel Galbán Mambo Sinuendo (2003)	The Veils The Runaway Found (2004)

Half circles


Keith Jarrett Back Hand (1975)	Of Montreal Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer ? (2007)

Silver man


Harald Grosskopf Synthesist (1980)	U.D.O. Mean Machine (1989)


Harald Grosskopf Synthesist (reissue) (1999)	Harald Grosskopf Synthesist 2010 (2010)

Guitar in motion (2)


Chet Atkins Finger-Style Guitar (1957)	Lightnin' Hopkins Strums the Blues (1958)	Chromatics Kill for Love (2012)

Red dress girl with a leopard in various settings


Cowboy Junkies The Nomad Series Volume 1: Renmin Park (2010)	Cowboy Junkies The Nomad Series Volume 2: Demons (2010)


Cowboy Junkies The Nomad Series Volume 3: Sing in my Meadow (2011)	Cowboy Junkies The Nomad Series Volume 4: The Wilderness (2012)

Cowboy Junkies

The Nomad Series Boxset (2012)

Raised fist


Dominique Grange La Pègre EP (1968)	The Chemical Brothers Push the Button (2005)

The sound machine (2)


Don Ellis Live at Montreux (1978)	Beastie Boys The Mix-up (2007)


The Herbaliser Same as it Never Was (2008)	Owl City Mobile Orchestra (2015)

Star on white background


Stina Nordenstam Dynamite (1996)	David Bowie Black Star (2016)

Desert fantasy


Space Deliverance (1977)	Zombi Escape Velocity (2011)

Hands on face


Miles Davis Tutu (back) (1986)	Faithless Reverence (1996)	Petite Noir The King of Anxiety (2015)

Centre of the Eye


The Freak Scene Psychedelic Psoul (1967)	Nektar Journey to the Centre of the Eye (1971)

Interior windows


Ben Watt Hendra (2014)	Various Air Texture, Vol. IV (2014)

Backlight window


Suede Dog Man Star (1994)	The War on Drugs Lost in the Dream (2014)

Feathers


The Appleseed Cast Low Level Owl, Volume 1 (2001)	The Appleseed Cast Low Level Owl, Volume 2 (2001)


Marc Copland - John Abercrombie Speak to Me (2011)	Chapel Hill One for the Birds (2013)	Snowbird Moon (2014)

Insect print


Pete Rugolo Music for Hi-Fi Bugs (1956)	Syd Barrett Barrett (1970)	Hubert-Félix Thiéfaine Séquelles (2009)

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