Top Ten Album Covers of All Time

One of my favorite mediums of graphic design has been the album cover. Although it has seen a decline in recent years, I think their are still many artists out their utilizing it very well. This is by no means an objective, classical look at album covers, just some of my personal favorites.

10. Autolux - Future Perfect


An incredible debut from a fairly unknown band, the thing I really liked about this cover was the contrast between the light and dark balloons. It gives off a really creepy vibe, semi-science fictionish. Interesting fact, the record label the are on is owned by the Coen Brothers.

9. Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation


Is it a good design, or is it simply iconic? I'm not sure. It's so freakishly simple, but the moment I first saw this album cover, it was seared into my memory. Like it or hate it, it captures the band perfectly.

8. My Bloody Valentine


I know. It's a pink guitar blob. But if you have ever heard My Bloody Valentine, you'd realize how absolutely perfect this album cover is. Their music is precisely this: hazy, blurry, druggy, vaguely sexual.

7. Radiohead - In Rainbows


A pretty recent addition to my top ten list, all of Radiohead's album artwork deserves a place on this list. However, this caught my eye because of how big a departure it was from their previous stuff. It's purely colorful blobs of splattered wax, with letterspaced words and a complete lack of symbols (which normally a recurring theme in their art).

6. Stereolab - Emperor Tomato Ketchup


Stereolab is so awesome, they make gradients look good. It's true.

5. Danielson - Ships


A crazy, fundementalist Christian family band, these guys have the craziest music. And their artwork is equally crazy. I don't even know what it is. Psychedelic Christian? Folk-psychedelic Christian? Whatever it is, it's really cool.

4 - Deerhunter - Cryptograms


A great designer as well as a great musician, Bradford Cox, the lead singer of Deerhunter is a graphic designer. He does all the bands artwork, and is very fond of illustrations like these, as well as the use of Helvetica. Really trippy stuff.

3. Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures


A truly classic album cover, Joy Division released this in 1979, and this cover has an interesting story behind it. From Wikipedia:

"The front cover image comes from an edition of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy, and was originally drawn with black lines on a white background. It presents exactly 100 successive pulses from the first pulsar discovered, PSR B1919+21 (often referred to in the context of this album by its older name, CP^[1] The cover design is credited to Joy Division, Peter Saville and Chris Mathan. The back cover of the album contains no track listings, leaving a blank table where one would expect the listings to be.

The original LP release contained no track information on the labels, nor the traditional "side one" and "side two" designations. The ostensible "side one" was labeled Outside and displayed a reproduction of the image on the album cover, while the other side was labeled Inside and displayed the same image with the colors reversed (black-on-white). Track information and album credits appeared on the inner sleeve only."

2. Benoit Pioulard - Precis


What is it? A photograph? An illustration? Both? It's gorgeous, whatever the hell it is. The use of typography is incredibly restrained as well. Most bands have a tendency to have their names take up half the cover. Not here. I can't tell if the type face is Futura or Kabel. I'm leaning towards Kabel.

1. Radiohead - Kid A


I know, how predictable of me. I truly am a hack for Radiohead. I fell in love with this album cover the moment I saw it. The typography, the colors, the composition, the contrast between hand drawn and computer rendered overlay's, it captures such an apocalyptic feel (appropriate to the sound of the album).

Well, that's it for that list. I'll try to think of some other favorite designs I have found over the years, and maybe come up with a few more top lists.