The British band, New Order, released the album Power, Corruption and Lies in 1983 to considerable acclaim–and with a fascinating album cover. The brainchild of the great graphic designer, Peter Saville, this was an album sleeve that illustrated Saville’s talent for synthesizing high art and design, and for casting traditional imagery in a fresh, new light.
Featuring a romantic, still-life painting by the 19th Century French painter, Henri Fantin Latour, the cover was conspicuously devoid of type, but included a subtle, color-coded alphabet Saville created specifically for the band–which, when decoded, spelled the band’s name and album title.
When the British Royal Mail Service issues a set of stamps in 2010 immortalizing 10 classic album covers by British bands, Power, Corruption and Lies, not surprisingly, will be amongst the chosen. The stamps, incidentally, will be uniquely shaped–to accommodate a section of vinyl disk peeking out on the right.
