Great Record Sleeves Of Our Time...

.... do you remember how excitedly you rushed home from your local record shop to play that first piece of vinyl bought, or the first CD (if you're part of the generation that missed out on black plastic, in which case, I hate you all, you young bastards)? Can you recall just how vital it felt to both aurally and visually devour the entire album - the music, the design, the sleeve notes, the band's visual identity/logo, the photography, the typography? No? Oh, just me then.

The whole "check out the cover" concept is gradually getting eroded away due to the popluarity of the iPod and other portable music carriers, as downloads of MP3s gradually begin to replace traditional music purchases through shops and actually physically having a CD sleeve is starting to look unfortunately archaic. Which is a shame, I love music, but I like to have the whole shiny package in my hands.

I love looking through racks of CD's, admiring the designs and occasionally coming across something that looks great, and you'd hope the record matched up. Don't get me wrong, some of the greatest records ever made have crappy sleeves, and sometimes a great sleeve will hold an absolute piece of shit. But when you get a great record in a great sleeve... ahhh well, it's perfect.

Here's the first in an occasional tribute to those record sleeves which I think look fantastic.

Duran Duran "Rio"

All the way back to 1982, this sleeve of Duran's breakthrough album is a classic. The albums graphic design is by Malcolm Garrett of the Assorted Images team, but the actual iconic illustration is provided by Patrick Nagel (1945 - 1984), an American artist who was renowned for his images of the female form presented in an Art Deco style, influenced by Japanese woodblock print techniques. The band used his work after seeing his illustrations in such periodicals as Playboy. Duran Duran albums up to and including 1986's "Notorious" always had style and presence, with clean simple fonts and striking photography and design, and this is one of my favourites.

Here's Nagel's painting in detail:

Here's the alternative unused cover:


And here's some of Nagel's other work: