The Beatles – Revolver album art
Front cover of the UK release by Parlophone (PMC 7009)
From Wikipedia:
Revolver is the seventh studio album by the English rock band the Beatles. It was released on 5 August 1966, accompanied by the double A-side single “Eleanor Rigby” / “Yellow Submarine”. The album was the Beatles’ final recording project before their retirement as live performers and marked the group’s most overt use of studio technology to date, building on the advances of their late 1965 release Rubber Soul. It has since become regarded as one of the greatest and most innovative albums in the history of popular music, with recognition centred on its range of musical styles, diverse sounds and lyrical content. […]
Voormann’s artwork was part line drawing and part collage, using photographs mostly taken over 1964–65 by Robert Freeman. In his line drawings of the four Beatles (McCartney, Lennon, Harrison and Starr, clockwise from top-left), Voormann drew inspiration from the work of the nineteenth-century illustrator Aubrey Beardsley, who was the subject of a long-running exhibition at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum in 1966 and highly influential on fashion and design themes of the time. Voormann placed the various photos within the tangle of hair that connects the four faces. Turner writes that the drawings show each Beatle “in another state of consciousness”, such that the older images appear to be tumbling out from them.
The title on the front cover is set in caps from Grotesque No. 9.
Back cover of the UK release by Parlophone (PMC 7009), with a photo taken by Robert Whitaker during the filming at Abbey Road on 19 May. Here the title is rendered in caps from Placard, with the track names and credits set in several styles from Univers. The info at the bottom is set in the Venus series, including Condensed and Extended styles. The printer’s credit is in Gill Sans.
The spine lettering uses an extrabold weight of Gill Sans.
Front cover of the US release by Capitol Records (T 2576). Apart from the company’s logo, it is identical to the British version.
Back cover of the US release by Capitol Records (T 2576). For the North American market, Revolver was reduced to eleven songs, with the omitted three appearing on the June 1966 LP Yesterday and Today. The title isn’t set in Placard, but in the similar Anzeigen-Grotesk. The small bits use various styles from the Trade Gothic series.
1 Comment on “The Beatles – Revolver album art”
Love every. Records they. Made.