And despite the feeling that, first, the size of a CD case, and now streaming, have taken something out of the creativity of album art, there's still wonderful imagery being created for our favourite artists today.By Phil Hebblethwaite - BBC.com
Perhaps the most iconic album cover of all - the design for The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - was created by British pop artist Peter Blake, and he was also behind the sleeve for Band Aid's Do They Know It's Christmas?, the second biggest-selling single of all time in the UK (after Elton John's Candle in the Wind 1997). Blake was a tutor at the Royal College of Art in London and counted Ian Dury among his students in the mid-60s. Blake painted him for the cover of Dury's 1977 debut album, New Boots and Panties!!, and he also created the sleeve for 2009's Staring Down the Barrel by The Blockheads, Dury's band.
Vaughan Oliver was hugely influenced by Roger Dean. "I wanted to design record sleeves from the moment I went to see a Roger Dean lecture in Durham when I was 15," he told the Guardian. "His sleeves weren't about how the band looked, but the use of imagination." Most closely associated with prog rock, and especially Yes, Dean's work often features fantasy landscapes or other-worldly, dystopian scenes and he's been noted for his bold use of original typography, too. Dean has also worked in the gaming industry, creating artwork for developer Psygnosis and even redesigning the Tetris logo.
Storm Thorgerson created epochal imagery from every era of music since the 1960s. He was part of Hipgnosis, who designed Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon artwork, and he subsequently worked on countless other covers for the band, as well as with 10cc, Peter Gabriel, Muse, Led Zeppelin, Biffy Clyro, ELO and Wings. After he died in 2013, Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason said he would be remembered for his "great ideas and high, sometimes infuriatingly high, standards... Two days before he passed away, and by then completely exhausted, he was still demanding approval for artwork and haranguing his loyal assistants."
Self-taught artist Derek Riggs came up with Iron Maiden's mascot character, Eddie, and designed the group's sleeves up to 1990's No Prayer for the Dying, after which other artists were employed to create variations on his work. This has been controversial. In Mick Wall's book Iron Maiden: Run to the Hills, Maiden manager Rod Smallwood is quoted as saying, "We wanted to upgrade Eddie for the 90s," but many fans think the band deserted Riggs. In 2014, a petition was started to 'Bring Back Derek Riggs', attracting more than 3,000 signatures. Riggs also worked for Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson on his 1997 album Accident of Birth, and with German power metal band Gamma Ray.
Vaughan Oliver's work is unique - quite unlike most album cover design and a key part of the aesthetic of indie label 4AD in their early days. Influenced by Salvador Dali, his imagery can be both mysterious and surreal, as you'll know from his classic Pixiescovers like Doolittle (1989), Bossanova (1990), and Trompe Le Monde (1991). At 4AD, Oliver has also worked with The Breeders, Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil, and said of the above Breeders cover, to Time Out: "A male fertility dance, in response to some very visceral music from an almost all-girl band. Kim Deal has a sense of humour, to which I was trying to appeal."
