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Album Covers

Here I have re-created some of the nice artwork from the vinyl age, and added a few that never existed before. I don’t miss vinyl for the sound, handling or storage. I do miss the big, beautiful 12″ covers and often inner sleeves, complete with both more artwork and liner notes with information about the music and the bands.

These are mostly drawn using vector graphics in Affinity Designer, mostly on iPad and some on the Mac. A few could be created with pixel based “Photoshop-like” tools too.

Circular design with four quarters in the background, a sunset, a clear day, an ocean scene and a dessert scene. Over this are two mechanical looking hands grabbing each other in a handshake. The left one is translucent, glass-looking and the other is a metallic chromed hand. The design was part of the packaging for Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" album. If memory serves, it was also used as the centre sticker for the vinyl record, but I am not a 100% sure about that.
Shine on!
Augie over Battersea Power Station
The iconic cover illustration from Pink Floyd's LP "Dark Side of the Moon". A dark square with a triangular prism where one white beam of light goes in and a spectrum of six colours come out the other side.
Dark Side of the Moon
Album cover for Toto's fourth album, IV. A red background and the Toto-sword in the middle, stuck trough four rings of stone with brass or gold rims.
Rosanna to Africa
Vector drawing of Suzanne Vega's cover to the album "Nine Objects of Desire" from 1996. It's a close-up shot of her holding a green apple in front of her right eye. She's got short, red hair and is photographed in front of a green backdrop. The contrasts are dramatic.
Bursting with secrets within
Album cover for Weather Report's 1984 album "Domino Theory". A black background with big white letters jumbled around, forming the band name, title and track names. Typeface is Swiss 911 Extra Compressed. Dotted lines are drawn on top of the text in different weights and colours, yellow, red blue and black.
Domino Theory, 1984
Cover for New Order's 1981 release "Movement". Original design created by Peter Saville, here re-drawn using Affinity Designer.
Design by Peter Saville
The cover for New Order's classic "Blue Monday". A black sleeve with cutout holes to resemble a floppy disk. A colour coded bar is printed to the far left.
Blue Monday, Fac 73
Cover for New Order's 1983 release "Confusion". Original design created by Peter Saville, here re-drawn using Affinity Designer.
NEW ORDER / CONFUSION
Album cover for Snarky Puppy's "Empire Central". A multi-coloured wash over the base in mauve (?) and a neon monoline design overlay representing a big city skyline, including a guitar and a horn.
Cover art for Nils Landgren Funk Unit's "Licence to Funk" album. A silhouette of Nils, holding his trombone over his head with the left hand and the right is making a fist. White background.
Ain’t nobody messing with him!
Album cover to Prince' soundtrack for the 1989 movie Batman. The Batman logo, a black 3D bat in an oval over an burnt orange background.
Ever dance with the Devil
in the pale moonlight?
Album cover to the first album by Yellow Magic Orchestra, released 1978. A gesiha with a folding fan and huge sunglasses. Instead of hair, multi-coloured cables are sticking up of her head.
The album with “Firecracker”
The album cover to "Transformer" by Lou Reed from 1972, re-drawn in Affinity Designer.
Transformer
Four alternate colour versions of the Lou Reed "Transformer" cover. One in dark blue, one in green with a purple top, one in red with a turquoise top and one in purple.
TRANSFORMED
The album cover to the 1979 album "London Calling" by The Clash.
London Calling
Vector drawing of Sweet's "Off the Record" cover from 1977, based on the original by Terry Pastor. It's the one with the extreme close-up of a turntable pick-up. It's a golden sunset in the distance.
One of the great 12-inch sleeves.
Vector drawing of Duran Duran's album "Rio", originally designed and created by Patrick Nagel
…and she dances on the sand
Cover to the Ultravox album "Rage in Eden" with three stylised horse heads in front of each other.
The “Horse” design
Album cover for Scritti Politti's "Cupid & Psyche 85"
A perfect way to make the girls go crazy!
The cover for the Ultravox album "Rage in Eden" with the cubist face design.
The “Face” design
A vector drawing of the album cover for Queen's "A Day at the Races" from 1976. One red and one grey lion, both wearing crowns, are holding a big, ornamented light blue letter Q between them. In the middle of the Q, a royal crown is placed. One fairy in pink sits in the grass to the left while another fairy in blue is watching her. Behind the Q, a red crab is engulfed in flames and a white'ish bird is spreading their wings over the top. The background is black, but with a blue/yellow motif behind the characters signifying a rising sun on a summer morning. Band name and album title set in "Parfum" typeface below the design.
Well, there’s a lot going on here…
Vector drawing of the album cover for Simple Minds' "Sparke in the Rain" album from 1984.
Come in, come out of the rain.
A Pride-coloured version of Queen's album cover for "A Day At The Races". For this special edition, the band name reads "Queer" and the title is "A Day At The Parade".
I seriously don’t think
Freddie would mind
A black LP sleeve with red LED segments making up the faces of the members of the band: Andy, Sting and Stewart.
Left to right: Andy, Sting and Stewart.
Album cover for Steely Dan's classic album "aja", released 1977. It is a mainly black cover with just a hint of a female face and the white and red stripes of her kimono. The title is set in a brushed script with eastern associations. The band name is set in Helvetica.
Aja
Album cover to Sting's "Bring on the Night" live recording. Possibly the best concert I've ever been to, or at least tied with Prince's "Sign 'o' The Times" tour.
Bring on the Night
Vector drawing of the cover to Eliane Elias' album "Plays Live" from 2009.
Eliane Elias
Vector portrait of the wonderful vocalist Sabrina Starke from Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Based on the original photo by Floor Stoop, fotofloor.com.
Another fantastic vocalist
from The Netherlands
Vector drawing of Joni Mitchell's album cover for "Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm"
The cover from Joni’s 1988 album “Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm”.
Simple illustration of Miles Davis' cover to the "Tutu" album. His face is in close-up, with dramatic lighting from above and very high contrast.
Tutu
Album cover for Marcus Miller's "Tutu revisited" album. A close-up of his face with very narrow depth of field.
Tutu revisited
Good music is good, no matter what KIND of music it is. -Miles Davis
Miles
Vector drawing of Janet Jackson's album "Rhythm Nation 1814" released in 1989.
Miss Janet
Album cover to U2's live album "Rattle and Hum" from 1988.
The Edge on guitar
The Dude
Album cover for Everything but the Girl's 1991 release "Worldwide". A photo cut-out of Ben and Tracey standing on top of a painted guitar across the bottom part of an othewise white square. Title text set in Franklin Gothic. Drawn using Affinity Designer on iPad.
EBTG 💞
Drawing of the cover of Chaka Kahn's "I feel for U" single
I feel 4 U
Re-created the artwork for Spandau Ballet's 1983 album "True"
I know, this much is TRUE!
Eurythmics
Grace Jones
Madonna – True Blue
My vector version of the epic ELO album cover for "Out of the Blue" - the one with the flying saucer and a shuttle just docking.
Epic album cover
Grace Jones / Island Life album cover
Grace Jones
My HD vector version of the epic ELO album cover for "Out of the Blue" - the one with the flying saucer and a shuttle arriving at the dock.
The full album cover, folded out
My version of the album cover for Yello's "Claro Que Si" from 1981, created by Californian artist Jim Cherry.
“There came a lady through the night…”
Album cover for Yello's "the eye"
The Eye
Brothers Johnson
Yello
Stevie Wonder
Kate Bush
The cover for "Still", the live album by Joy Division
The only live album by Joy Division
Joy Division mock-up
Joy Division
Isolation - could have been a perfect Joy Division cover
Isolation
Album cover for Radio-Activity by Kraftwerk
Radio-Activity
Album cover to Autobahn by Kraftwerk
Autobahn
Album cover to Trans Europe Express by Kraftwerk
TEE
Art of Noise
Album cover to The Man Machine by Kraftwerk
The Man Machine
The album cover to Phil Collins' "Face Value" with most of his face replaced by Barry Chuckle.
Created for a chuckle…
Album cover with my image and name on it, using the design of Leonard Cohen's "I'm Your Man" album.
Short CV
Typographic poster using Helvetica to represent the cover photo of the "Smoke on the Water" single
Deep Purple, Mk. 2