ALBUM 3: Empires + Dance | 1980| designer: The Artifex Studio

Zoom Records | UK | LP | SPART 1140

Back cover

The third album by Simple Minds had a photographic cover that was a huge break from their first two. It was a pre-existing photo that had caught Jim Kerr’s eye in a magazine. What a powerful image for the music inside of that sleeve! The color is deceptively desaturated, and the judicious use of white space belies the oppression and claustrophobia  of the songs within. The crypto-Cyrillic font was a brilliant juxtaposition as East met West in a welter of suspicion and paranoia; the Cold War threatening to unleash the heat that we all feared. The band were as usual, depicted on the reverse cover, albeit in a slightly distorted video still. Fervent fans The Manic Street Preachers copped the look and font for their album “The Holy Bible” in 1994, when Simple Minds were lost in the wilderness  between albums during the dawn of grunge, almost ready to begin their topple from the commercial heights they’d had a lock on for the previous 14 years.

ALBUM 4: Sons + Fascination | 1981| designer: Assorted Images

Virgin Records | UK | LP | V 2207

Back cover

What a dazzling cover! When I think of Malcolm Garrett, I think of this album cover first, even though I probably saw the Buzzcocks cover for “A Different Kind Of Tension” prior to this. That record never reached the Record Cell, so that’s probably answer for that. The white space from “Empires + Dance” was held over for this sleeve and this time it was contrasted with intense, hypersaturated color and a stratified, grid-like layout that reflected the pulsing, motorik grooves within. Fonts were still ultramodern sans serif faces, with the exception of the defiantly contrasting catalog number on the reverse of the album set in Bodoni Poster. The effect was mathematical and precise, with room for something more organic as reflected with the blurring in some of the images. The band actually got on the front cover this time, though the long exposures blurred them into semi-obscurity. Appropriate enough as this album would finally deliver them from semi-obscurity to the top ten of the LP charts for the first time. It can be argued that the Kensington Flower Market never looked better.

Virgin Records | Mexico | LP | LA-483

Back cover

Stiff America | US | LP | TEES 102

The Mexican sleeve was an alternate design, of the Stiff America compilation “Themes For Great Cities.” Even then, Virgin Mexico recolored that design brown and red to be dramatically different from the original blue and green composition.

This was the first Simple Minds albums lacking a printed inner sleeve or lyric insert, though the Mexican pressing of “Sons + Fascination” once more distinguished itself by including one of these as shown above.

ALBUM 5: Sister Feelings Call | 1981| designer: Assorted Images

Virgin Records | UK | LP | OVED 2

Back cover

For the companion album issued at the same time as “Sons + Fascination,” Malcolm Garrett maintained the aesthetic, but shifted the color palette to two shades of dominating blue, with photos relegated to grayscale. Since this was designed as a budget album, once the twofer sold out, the selling price of this was just £2.99, and the two color job was probably down to budgetary concerns.

Next: …[Yet] More Covers