Album cover

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An album cover is a cover used to package commercial audio recordings such as the printed cardboard covers that were typically used to package 12" gramophone records from the 1960s through to the 1980s when the 12" record was the major format for distribution of popular music.

The cover served three main purposes:

To protect the record, whose grooved surface was delicate.
To advertise the contents, as the record had little room on its own record label.
To convey the artistic aspirations of the original artists (see Cover art and Alex Steinweiss).

The cover became an important part of the culture of music at the time. As a marketing tool and an expression of artistic intent, gatefold covers, (a folded double cover), and inserts, often with lyric sheets, made the album cover a desirable artifact in its own right. Notable examples are The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band which had cut-out inserts, lyrics, a gatefold sleeve though a single album; and Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon which had gatefold, lyrics, no title on the sleeve and poster inserts. The move to the small (less than 1/4 the size of a record) CD format lost that impact, though attempts have been made to create a more desirable packaging for the CD format, for example the re-issue of Sgt. Pepper, which had a cardboard box and booklet, or the use of oversized packaging.

The importance of cover design was such that some artists specialized or gained fame through their work, notably the design team Hipgnosis (through their work on Pink Floyd albums amongst others) and Roger Dean famous for his Yes and Greenslade covers.

A number of companies specialized in the manufacture of album covers. In the UK, for example, Garrod and Lofthouse were the leading company - the G & L mark was seen on the majority of albums at the time.

Album covers were prone to wear and tear. In part this was due to the construction. Album covers were almost universally made of cardboard. A variety of treatments could be applied to improve both their appearance and durability; typically they were covered in a clear plastic foil. A small industry arose providing storage for albums and album cover covers, typically clear plastic.

The record surface was readily damaged, so aside from the cover, there was usually a further protective cover to protect against dust and handling. The inner sleeve (as it was known) was either thin white paper, often unprinted, or a paper sleeve supporting a thin plastic bag. These quite often had a circular cut out so that the record label could be seen without directly handling the record, though when the sleeve was used to print lyrics, which became quite common, then there was usually no hole. Decca Records used a system of colour-coding on these sleeves where a blue colour denoted a stereophonic recording while red denoted a monophonic recording (the mono record players of the time were not always compatible with stereo records). This system was begun in the 1960s to reduce packaging costs.

There is also a website about awful album covers, the Museum of Bad Album Covers. The users there made a ranking, in which the worst was Scorpions's Virgin Killer.