Music is an aural art form. But the packaging for the recordings—the album cover—has a distinct aesthetic, one that has evolved along with distribution technologies and formats.

 

In the 1960s, the cardboard record jacket came into its own as a canvas for graphic artists, who used its ample dimensions to spin elaborate visual and conceptual fantasias. Album covers became generational touchstones, with iconic images like the "family portrait" of famous people rendered as cardboard cutouts and waxworks on the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Day-Glo colors and trippy starburst ornamentation on Cream's Disraeli Gears, and the extravagantly Gothic lettering on the Grateful Dead's Aoxomoxoa.

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In the late '80s and '90s, when the CD replaced vinyl as the format of choice, the new 5.5- by 5.5-inch Jewel ...

 

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Vinyl LP cover: 153.1 square inches

CD case: 22.6 square inches

iPod Nano Cover Flow icon: 0.4 square inch

When the MP3 gained popularity in the late '90s,....

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 http://www.wired.com/culture/design/magazine/17-03/dp_recordart