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.

Coloured Squares

Mike Bloomfield, Al Kooper, Stephen Stills

Super Session (1968)

Vanilla Fudge

Near the Beginning (1969)

Jerry Garcia Band

Let It Rock - The Jerry Garcia Collection, Volume 2:

Keystone Berkeley, November 17 & 18, 1975 (2009)

Buena Vista


Various Buena Vista Social Club (1997)	Captain Everything Buena Vista Bingo Club (2006)	Various Buena Vista Social Club at Carnegie Hall (2008)

Speaker grid


Kraftwerk Radio-Aktivität (1975)	Nihils Perspectives (2017)

Messy curly hair


Bob Dylan The Bob Dylan 60's Collection (2009)	Daniel Romano Mosey (2016)

Skull (profile)


The Kinks To the Bone (1986)	Accept Death Row (1994)

Alphabet soup pasta


The Jesus and Mary Chain Damage and Joy (2017)	Cabbage Young, Dumb and Full of... (2017)

Circus tricks


The Doors Strange Days (1967)	Family Entertainment (1969)

Snow globe


Book of Love Candy Carol (1991)	Laika Sounds of the Satellites (1997)

Red setting sun


Cactus Cactus (1970)	Black Renaissance Body, Mind & Spirit (1976/2002)

Band on a glacier


The Fucking Champs V (2002)	Archive Restriction (2015)

Now and then


Phil Collins Face Value (1981)	Phil Collins Face Value (Deluxe) (2016)


Phil Collins Hello, I Must Be Going ! (1982)	Phil Collins Hello, I Must Be Going ! (Deluxe) (2016)


Phil Collins No Jacket Required (1985)	Phil Collins No Jacket Required (Deluxe) (2016)


Phil Collins ...But Seriously (1989)	Phil Collins ...But Seriously (Deluxe) (2016)


Phil Collins Both Sides (1993)	Phil Collins Both Sides (Deluxe) (2016)


Phil Collins Testify (2002)	Phil Collins Testify (Deluxe) (2016)


Phil Collins Going Back (2010)	Phil Collins The Essential Going Back (Deluxe) (2016)

Coloured squares


Thelonious Martin Colors (2012)	New Order Lost Sirens (2013)

Psychedelic pink


Jefferson Airplane Surrealistic Pillow (1967)	Electric Citizen Higher Time (2016)

Virtuoso wannabes


Marc Almond Tenement Symphony (1991)	Morrissey Ringleader of the Tormentors (2016)

Earth skull


Jean-Michel Jarre Oxygène (1976)	Jean-Michel Jarre Oxygène 3 (2016)

Armchair


Paul McCartney Memory Almost Full (2007)	Snarky Puppy Culcha Vulcah (2016)

Modern cowboys in sepia


Big Audio Dynamite This Is Big Audio Dynamite (1985)	Jane's Addiction Strays (2003)

In the back of the car


The Kills Blood Pressure (2011)	Warhaus We Fucked a Flame into Being (2016)

Car with blue sky


Hank Mobley A Caddy for Daddy (1966)	Sharkboy Matinee (1994)