Why We’ll Never Have an Iconic Record Cover Like ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ Again

[The Computer Audiophile]

Interesting Article:

 

 

"It’s hard to imagine a time when Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon didn’t exist. Its imagery has become so diluted into popular culture that it’s easy to forget its actual value as a rock & roll artifact.

Most of all, it stands as a beacon for an era of record cover design that we’ll never come into contact with again. Partly because artists and musicians have moved on to some other way to connect art and music, and partly because no label is going to hand over fifty grand for the artwork of the packaging if they don’t have to.

While any designer could probably have retired for the rest of their careers following the Dark Side cover, the thing is, it was just one in a number of celebrated sleeves designed by art house collective, Hipgnosis."

 

https://medium.com/cuepoint/why-we-ll-never-have-an-iconic-record-cover-like-dark-side-of-the-moon-again-957480dcb692

[firedog]

The explanation has little to do with money, I think.

Album covers lost their importance in popular culture as soon as we switched to CD's. The covers on the jewel cases are just too small to make the visual impact that a 12" LP cover does, and the printed text is often too small even for younger people to read comfortably. We'd read along with printed lyrics on an LP cover; on a CD insert it was much more difficult and people would give up.

 

Anyway, you could do lots of great album cover art without dropping 50K...it's called digital/computer graphics technology. Don't need all those manual hours of graphic artists that you did back in the late 60's and 70's...But the medium isn't there anymore.