-Alexander Tochilovsky, Curator at The Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography
“In 1959, Josef Albers was hired to make a series of sleeves for a new record label, which would go on to define easy listening music in the United States. It was an unusual assignment for Albers, as he didn’t take many design jobs after immigrating to the US. This, however, is a masterful exercise in restraint and a perfect fit to the relatively new stereoscopic sound being showcased on these albums. They occupy a place in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. I wrote about this series in more depth over on Medium.”
Persuasive Percussion (1959)
Terry Snyder and the All Stars
-Alexander Tochilovsky, Curator at The Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography
"The optical illusion on this cover (designed by Werner G. Krüger) makes the circles appear even though no circles actually exist, merely a pattern of 16 pinched diamond shapes. The Adagio movement of the composition is most notable for being used by Stanley Kubrick to score a key scene in The Shining. The cover is oddly the most modern and abstract cover Werner ever designed."
Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta (2004)
Béla Bartók
Lamar’s third studio album gained headlines for its bold and controversial cover. Shot by French photographer Denis Rouvre, it features both friends and family of Lamar. In an interview with Mass Appeal, Lamar says the cover was about “taking people from (his) neighbor and taking them around the world, letting them see things that (he’s) experienced.” Noisey editor Jabbari Weekes called the cover “one of the most powerful and representative pieces of iconography of the Obama era."
To Pimp a Butterfly (2015)
Kendrick Lamar
-Alexander Tochilovsky, Curator at The Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography
“New Order’s 1987 compilation album was designed by Peter Saville and Trevor Key. The cover clearly stands back and lets the music on the album itself take center stage. The matter-of-fact type-only design is a bit more than that. The words "New" and "Substance," and the year "1987" are the same size, but the word "Order" is significantly larger. This emphasizes the "Order," in what can be construed perhaps as a stake in the ground. New Order has arrived. Everything starts now.”
Substance (1987)
New Order
-Adrian Shaughnessy, Designer, Writer, and Senior Tutor at the Royal College of Art
“This album cover is designed by Richard Hamilton, a wonderful artist with a vivid grasp of the zeitgeist. His brilliant ultra minimalist cover captured that moment at the end of the sixties when the hippie dream died and the world moved on to something harsher and much less idealistic. ”
The Beatles (1968)
The Beatles
-Alexander Tochilovsky, Curator at The Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography
"Trevor Jackson conceived of and designed the packaging for the Soulwax’s Any Minute Now album, in collaboration with Richard Robinson in 2004. It’s pretty daring in its simplicity. The directness of the graphics and the near imperceptibility of the image underneath it all is striking—just what Jackson hoped for. The graphics make a smart allusion to the wall of sound that many of the songs have on the album. It’s as if there is a thick screen of sound on the front edge of the tracks, much like the patterned screen on the cover."
Any Minute Now (2004)
Soulwax
Prince’s third album represented a sort of graduation from a more innocent image to the raunchy lyricist we all know him as. The cover image, shot by Minneapolis photographer Allen Beaulieu, shows Prince wearing bikini briefs, standing boldly in front of a busy patterned background. In reviewing the album, Rolling Stone writer Ken Tucker wrote “nothing… could have prepared us for the liberating lewdness of Dirty Mind.”
Dirty Mind (1980)
Prince
-Alexander Tochilovsky, Curator at The Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography
“This cover was designed by Massive Attack’s own Robert Del Naja and the prolific album designer, Tom Hingston. It smartly foregrounds the masterful photos by Nick Knight, showing close-ups of insects, but possibly mixed with what could be mechanical objects. The ambiguity is what gives it the right tone, fitting to the music on the album. The cover is part of MoMA’s permanent collection.”
Mezzanine (1998)
Massive Attack
-Kevin Cummins, Photographer
“This set the tone for punk photography. It's so much more than four guys in leather jackets and denims standing against a brick wall. It screams ‘attitude’ and you know what it will sound like when you put it on the turntable and finally stop admiring the sleeve.”
Ramones (1976)
Ramones
-Adrian Shaughnessy, Designer, Writer, and Senior Tutor at the Royal College of Art
“The Tortoise cover flags up the era of CD-R, which presaged a monumental moment in pop history—the era of Napster and downloading. It’s free from high aesthetic posturing and is more memorable and effective for it. ”
TNT (1998)
Tortoise
-Kevin Cummins, Photographer
“Simplicity is the key here. Androgynous woman in black & white clothing leaning against white wall. The shot intrigues. It’s very sexual but also says ‘Don’t fuck with me.’”
Horses (1975)
Patti Smith
This iconic image is actually a graph representing the signals emitted by a pulsar star that the band found in an encyclopedia. They brought the image to designer Peter Saville, who used it to create the cover for Unknown Pleasures. The cover has achieved a sort of cult status in the years since, spawning works of art, fashion, tattoos, and more. In a 2012 interview, Saville says of the cover “the endless possible interpretations of this diagram (are what) make it so powerful and useful.”
Unknown Pleasures (1979)
Joy Division
Designers, photographers, and industry experts share their favorite monochrome album covers.
by Andrew Littlefield
The Best Black & White Album Covers