THE 5 BEST ALBUM COVERS Four Six Three
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Four Six Three THE 5 BEST ALBUM COVERS The album cover dates from 1939, when Columbia Records art director Alex Steinweiss decided his label’s offerings might find a wider audience with some added visual appeal. Since the very first Steinweiss design, an album of showtunes by Rogers and Hart, album covers have represented the apotheosis and nadir of graphic design, and have touched all points in between. Last weekend we asked our readers to select the best album covers of all time. British bands took four out of five of the top spots. In the age of the digital download, the album cover is sadly a lost art – which probably explains why LONDONJuly 2018 CALLINGThe London Issue 90 percent of the albums that readers selected come from the 1960s and the 1970s. Here are the Top 5: The Clash ‘London Calling’ (1979, CBS Records) Designer: Ray Lowry Total reader votes: 695 Pennie Smith was snapping photos of the Clash at New York’s Palladium when The Beatles she captured one of the most iconic images in rock history. Paul Simonon was an- ‘Abbey Road’ noyed by the relatively quiet audience, so he began smashing his bass guitar against the floor. Clash singer Joe Strummer loved GOING the photo, but Smith tried to convince him (1969, Apple Records) Designer: John Kosh it was too out of focus for the cover. Total reader votes: 729 UNDERGROUND: Beatles nuts who believed that Paul McCartney died around 1967 and was HARRY BECK AND THE replaced by a dopplegänger found a lot to examine on this cover. They saw the ICONIC TUBE MAP picture as a funeral procession: John as the preacher, Ringo as the mourner, George as the gravedigger and Paul as the corpse. KEEP IT SIMPLE Iain Macmillan shot the cover on August 8th, 1969, outside of Abbey Road studios. The shoot involved just six frames and 10 AND CARRY ON: minutes of work. 5 BRITISH MASTERS OF Pink Floyd MINIMALISM Dark Side Of The Moon GIACOMETTI (1993, Harvet Records) Designer: Hipgnosis Nirvana Total reader votes: 933 Hipgnosis had designed several of AT THE TATE: Pink Floyd’s previous albums, with AFTER 50 YEARS, ‘Nevermind’ controversial results: the band’s record company had reacted with confu- THE PRODIGAL sion when faced with the collective’s non-traditional designs that omitted SON RETURNS (1993, Geffen Records) Designer: Robert Fisher words. Their initial inspiration for Total reader votes: 755 Dark Side was a photo of a prism on Spencer Elden, the naked baby top of some sheet music. on the cover, said he feels weird about his bizarre role in history. “It’s kind of creepy that many people have seen me naked,” he (1967, Apple Records) Designer: Peter Blake said. But what does this cover Total reader votes: 1, 202 mean? “Kurt was intellectual and deep-thinking about his work,” The Beatles The cover was originally going to show the Beatles playing in a says Fisher. park. That slowly evolved into the final concept, where they stand amidst cardboard cutouts of their heroes. The band originally planned on including Leo Gorcey, Gandhi, Jesus Christ and Adolf Hitler. Common sense kicked Hitler off the cover, the still-lin- ‘Sgt. Pepper’sClub Lonley Band’ gering Hearts bitterness of John Lennon’s “bigger than Jesus” comment kicked Jesus off the cover and Gandhi got the boot over concerns that India wouldn’t print the album. 32 • Four Six Three Four Six Three • 33 The London Tube has around 1.37 billion passengers annually. It rests as deep as 55.2 meteres underground and as shalow as 2.3 meteres. GOING UNDERGROUND Harry Beck and London’s iconic Tube map by Dan Carrier 34 • Four Six Three Four Six Three • 35 POSTER PARADE 1915 1921 1927 1927 1930 1930 1931 1947 After World War I, striking modern posters began to transform the stations of London’s underground railway system into public art galleries. The posters, now part of an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, were the crucial face of a pioneering public transport campaign for coherence and efficiency that also includ- ed station architecture, train interiors — and Harry Beck’s map. Maxwell Ashby Armfield Charles Paine Alfred Leete Frederick Charles Herrick Edward McKnight Kauffer Alan Rogers Edward McKnight Kauffer Misha Black and John Barker he tube map almost showed individual lines run by different distances between stations.” to produce one. But for something that there on the wall was a diagram that the current map was influenced by his never made it out of its railway companies. It was geographical- “He was modest,” recalls Garland. is so recognizable as a piece of “trade- was not done by him. It was devastat- work, or that it was an inferior design. creator’s notebook. The ly correct, but impossible to read. The “He’d quietly taken the diagram to mark” art, Harry Beck was not, accord- ing. To add to the insult, he thought When Beck fell ill, his piles of sketch- designer was Harry lines snaked all over the place. The first them and said: ‘You may be interested ing to Garland, part of the modernist it was a crude and ineffective version es were destined for the dustbin, but Beck, a young draughts- map, published in 1908, betrayed the in this.’ The publicity chiefs replied: movement that was sweeping through of his own diagram. It was signed by Garland stepped in and saved them man who drew electrical fact that different operators were com- “You can’t do it like this – the public the pysche of painters, sculptors, other Harold F Hutchison, not a designer – recognizing that they were crucial to circuitsT for the Underground. Beck’s bi- peting with each other and could not will be really confused by the idea, no designers and filmmakers of the period. but head of the publicity department.” understanding its development. Among ographer, Ken Garland, befriended him agree where the Underground ended. one will understand it.’ ” “He was not influenced by contemporary According to Garland, Beck had become the papers Garland saved was the first in the 1950s, and before the designer’s Harry laid out London’s Underground His idea was dismissed as ridiculous art,” says Garland. “He knew little or known in the publicity department for pencil sketch of the diagram, now at the death in 1974 he uncovered the story routes as he would a circuit board, and – people couldn’t understand why it nothing about it.” being “difficult” when it came to the di- V&A Museum. behind the creation of what Beck called took it to the publicity department. He wasn’t geographically accurate – and “The diagram”, as Beck insisted it agram, and there were moves to remove The diagram’s iconic status should “the diagram”. told Garland: “Looking at the old map later he was laid off. Beck’s dismissal was called, was a lifelong obsession. As his stewardship. not be overlooked, says Garland. “It “As a native of a small village in of the railways, it occurred to me that made him suspicious of London Un- new routes were added, Beck would tin- Beck embarked on a letter-writing has touched so many people. The tube Devon and moving to London to study it might be possible to tidy it up by derground. He chose to sell the idea ker with his design. He was constantly “YOU CAN’T DO IT diagram is one of the greatest pieces art, I found the metropolis impossible to straightening the lines, experimenting to them as a freelancer (for just ten seeking to improve its clarity, and when of graphic design produced, instantly navigate,” Garland recalls. “I would get with diagonals and evening out the guineas), giving him control over the the publicity department realized they recognizable and copied across the on the tube and see Harry’s diagram. future integrity of his design. But as had a hit on their hands, he had to LIKE THIS – THE world. His contribution to London can- London suddenly made sense, and so I work in his old office began to pick up, fend off “helpful” suggestions from tube not be easily measured, nor should it be asked people at the college if they knew his former colleagues remembered him: bosses. PUBLIC WILL BE underestimated.” who the designer was.” they had appreciated his help in the “For the best part of 30 years, his Garland was told that HC tube workers’ orchestra and, in 1933, home was turned over to the map,” REALLY Beck could be found at the he was back on board and pitching recalls Garland. “There were sketches London College of Printing, his idea again. all over the place. The front room would where he taught part- Garland continues: “Beck often have a massive copy spread out on CONFUSED BY time, and he paid him would not take no for an the floor for Harry to pore over. His wife a visit. They soon answer. He went back Nora would find, when making their THE IDEA, NO became friends. with a revised copy, bed, a pile of scribbled notes under the Beck first and finally they agreed pillow that Harry had been working on ONE WILL drew his to produce a small print in the middle of the night.” diagram in run of 1,000 fold-out But in 1959, after nearly three 1931 – a versions, put them decades of working on the diagram, he UNDERSTAND IT.’ difficult in central London was unceremoniously dumped from the campaign to take back control of his time to train stations and project.