2015
A quick history of album covers & designs
The late 19th century saw the birth of the lithographic poster, a technique first invented in 1798 by the German actor Alois Senefelder. The technique was popularised by Toulouse-Lautrec, Alphonse Mucha, Jules Cheret, during the Belle Epoque, an era when posters exposed audiences to new aesthetics as well as reflecting many countries and society’s unique cultures. Like In France, we found cafes and cabaret. Those Art Nouveau posters often depicted scenes from everyday life but in a stylised way.
By the beginning of the 20th century, the interest in Art nouveau faded. Lautrec passed away, Mucha and Cheret turned back to painting. At that time the German poster style (Plakatstil), proposed a new streamlined design emphasizing shapes and color, introducing a wide audience to the emerging abstract and modernist aesthetics.
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The first actual music "album" was pioneered in the music industry by a German record company Odeon Records which released a 75 RPM record of ‘The Nutcracker Suite’ by Tchaikovsky in 1909. Beginning in the 1920s, the record album’s appearance started to look similar to a photograph album, easy to keep on the shelf. Also, as the possible length extended more pieces could be compiled within one album. Later on, in 1938, the first art director of Columbia Records, Alex Steinweiss, was also the first to invent the concept of album cover art.
Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite,
Odeon Records (1909)
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