The ‘top ten’ is not in any ranking order
Other than how I stacked the records on my desk.
I chose to discuss ten of my favourite record covers as apposed to a list of my favourite designers for a few reasons, the first of which was to avoid making comparisons between designers that may have little in common both in context and practise. Although I never planned to use the top ten as a ranking system, I still wanted to write about a medium that could be reviewed on how adequately it fulfilled it’s purpose.
I’ve always been a fan of records in the same way many people are; the higher quality, the effort required in listening to one rather than say, just pushing a button – the whole package is appealing. What really gets me excited though is the fact that you are not just b
uying the legal rights to play a piece of music in your home (like a compact disc or an MP3) You are buying a piece of art. A high quality image that complements, distracts or even ruins the music it shelters. It was this chain of thought that lead me to ask, ‘What makes a record cover really good?’ I mulled it over for a long time and finally decided that rather than answering a difficult question that could be endlessly debated over, one that eventually came down to either taste or record sales, I would choose ten records from my collection who’s c
overs I thought separated them from the rest. I
chose only to use records that I owned to narrow down the thousands of brilliant pieces of art and design around and also as proof of the fact that I must really mean what I say, to have spent that extra premium on the wax version of a piece of music.
[I will list records in the categories of ‘album artist’, ‘album title’ and ‘artwork designer’.]
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