The point of sharing this is more for a reflection on what's lost with the shift to streaming - and helps to explain the utterly contrary surge in vinyl across all age ranges.
By chance I read a book on the label 4AD a few months ago, one of the kings of 80s/90s uncompromising indie, home to the likes of The Pixies and Cocteau Twins, artists who would've been suffocated and transformed at a major label.
I'd argue that it was another 80s/90s designer, Peter Saville, who helped make UK label enduringly iconic, who produced sleeve art that has broken through into contemporary mainstream culture. I see simulacra of his most famous Joy Division cover in many unexpected quarters these days.
There are so many other legends, notably Hipgnosis, and the album art of the likes of Iron Maiden continues to be a core part of their brand identity and appeal, directly linked to massively successful merchandising.
So ... when you come to meet the challenge of creating album art will be aware of the design innovations of the creative giants that strode the psychic realm of the imagination before you, producing nuanced, provocative pieces that would give a Freudian psychoanalyst nightmares?!
Couple of initial links:
Lost worlds of sex and magic: Vaughan Oliver's album sleeves for 4AD
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/dec/30/vaughan-oliver-album-sleeve-design-4ad-label-pixies-cocteau-twins?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Gmail (NB: contains one explicit image from a Pixies album cover)
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/dec/30/vaughan-oliver-album-sleeve-design-4ad-label-pixies-cocteau-twins?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Gmail (NB: contains one explicit image from a Pixies album cover)
Peter Saville on his album cover artwork
https://www.theguardian.com/music/gallery/2011/may/29/joydivision-neworder?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Gmail
https://www.theguardian.com/music/gallery/2011/may/29/joydivision-neworder?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Gmail
