Design and Innovation

Eye On Design: Unknown Pleasures Album Cover Art

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Unknown Pleasures Cover Art

Photo By Gail

This poster by Peter Savile, who first came to prominence for his designs for Factory Records, was issued to promote Joy Division’s 1979 debut album, Unknown Pleasures.  Band member Bernard Sumner found the image, a rendering of successive waves emitted by a pulsar, in an astronomy textbook.  Saville reversed the image from black-on-white to white-on-black, conjuring the darker atmospherics of the album’s sound. The Cover Art design has attained an iconic status, particularly of late, going so far as to spawn the term “joyplot,“ which refers to a method of data visualization that involves the layering of successive and comparative histograms.

Photographed as Part of the Exhibit, Too Fast To Live Too Young to Die: Punk Graphics at the Museum of Arts and Design in NYC.

One thought on “Eye On Design: Unknown Pleasures Album Cover Art”

  1. Confusion in her eyes that says it all
    She’s lost control
    And she’s clinging to the nearest passer-by
    She’s lost control
    And she gave away the secrets of her past and said
    I’ve lost control again
    And a voice that told her when and where to act, she said
    I’ve lost control again
    And she turned around and took me by the hand and said
    I’ve lost control again
    And how I’ll never know just why or understand, she said
    I’ve lost control again
    And she screamed out kicking on her side and said
    I’ve lost control again
    And seized up on the floor, I thought she’d died, she said
    I’ve lost control again
    She’s lost control again
    She’s lost control
    She’s lost control again
    She’s lost control
    Well I had to ‘phone her friend to state my case and say
    She’s lost control again
    And she showed up all the errors and mistakes and said
    And said I’ve lost control again
    But she expressed herself in many different ways, until
    She lost control again
    And walked upon the edge of no escape, ang laughed
    I’ve lost control again
    She’s lost control again
    She’s lost control
    She’s lost control again
    She’s lost control
    I can live a little better with a message of lies
    When the darkness broke in, I said I broke down and cried
    I can live a little, say the wanted line
    When the day is dull, when the day has come
    To lose control

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