Asking someone what the most iconic album cover is gets a ton of different responses. What you hear is based on generation/style/politics/shock value/etc: Nevermind, Dark Side of the Moon, Sticky Fingers, Never Mind the Bollocks, The Velvet Underground & Nico, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and so on.
Credit should be given where it’s due: Sgt. Pepper is responsible for propelling the world of album art into a whole new direction. That record’s use of cut/pasted pop icons and symbolic elements pushed album covers closer to the world of fine art. But before the Beatles shocked many and inspired countless others with their iconic album art, there was one label that was raising more than a few eyebrows: Blue Note Records.
Starting in 1956, designer Miles Reid was in charge of making album art that summed up cool. Before then, Blue Note’s artwork had been a mash-up of traditional album art styles and only hinted at the hard-edged and progressive sound of hard-bop. Once Reid came on board, this feeling of forward-reaching jazz came alive onto the album covers.
Reid’s technique was distinctly modern in a modernist period. His covers still held the information that previous covers did, but the design was bold and intensely graphic. Inspired by the Bauhaus mindset, he used sans-serif typefaces of varying weights, rectangular fields, and an extremely restricted color palette (usually black, white, and one other color). Jazz was beginning of wane in a world of Elvis Presleys, Buddy Hollys, and Little Richards, but the Blue Note covers’ effortless cool helped to usher in a new wave of jazz cats.
Blue Note’s artwork was a huge step in a new era of “total package” design, where everything associated with the record matches a certain feel. Looking at one of these covers 50 years after they were made still illustrates (with amazing clarity) the aura of the record on hand…
or complex, evolving, and introspective…
All images courtesy of: Birka Jazz (1500s) & Birka Jazz (4000s)
(Side note: I also found an interesting article that goes over Blue Note-inspired album art.)
Kyuss – Blues for the Red Sun
Cornelius - Fantasma
Cold Cave - Love Comes Close
Wu-Tang Clan - (36 Chambers)
Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese...
It is interesting to see icon covers shrunken down to a minimum of pixels. When you look at album art for vinyl, cds, mp3s in itunes, mp3s on a mobile music player, images on a cell phone, you can see which ones are suitable for icons. These days a lot of artists actually design album covers with these small formats in mind, but some of these old vinyls do just as well, specifically Blue Note.
I like the question…what’s the most “iconic” sort of album cover. This could generate an interesting discussion in the comments. I agree with Wes that album covers might naturally become simpler, and more graphic (think Dutch design) due to the shrinking size in various electronic music stores. Iconic, hmmm, what about the first Led Zeppelin album. I looked it up and then I ran across this blog…try to establish a rapport with this blogger maybe?–see http://henrikfalck.com/blog/2007/08.
I really enjoy what you’ve done with your website and the route you’ve chose for your blog. I’m definitely a lover of music, but have never given too much thought over the album covers (besides the fact that most are pretty cool). You should consider writing about the Lynyrd Skynyrd album, Street Survivor, maybe you already know the story behind it, but it’s a very interesting one!