In 1979, Joy Division released their album Unknown Pleasures, and since then it’s gone down as one of the greatest albums ever made. The cover for it is as famous as the album itself: jagged white lines over a black background, spawning many reinterpretations of it over the years.
The cover was the work of art director and graphic designer Peter Saville, who used to work for Factory Records back in the day. For New York’s Visualized Conference, Saville appears in a video talking about the origins of the cover, which if you weren’t aware of, it’s a representation of the first pulsar discovered! “As pretty much with all groups with their first release, [Joy Division] knew what they wanted on the cover,” Saville says. “They gave me this page… the page from the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy.” Ever since then, the cover has entered the domain of legendary status.
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