Wednesday, 31 July 2013

Research Object: The Beatles 'Revolver' by Klaus Voormann


Klaus Voormann was an undeniably creative and talented person – being a musician, record producer, and even winning Grammy Awards. But he is probably most known for designing artwork for popular bands, most famous of them all being the frount cover for the Beatles record ‘Revolver’. This happens to be one of my favourite album covers.

I love the collage effect and how Voormann’s line drawings of each band member are mixed with the pictures taken by Robert Whitaker (who produced many photographs of the Beatles during 1964 and 1966), as well as the plain black-and-white colour scheme. It’s also worth noting how despite the insane amount of detail with the tiny photos surrounding the thorough illustrations everything looks unexpectedly simple from a visual standpoint. These elements help give the artwork a very strong and memorable look.

Voormann would revisit his classic cover design decades later when using it alongside various other images of Beatles albums in another memorable music artwork: ‘The Beatles Anthology’ compilation series. Both of these pieces use a heavy amount of collage in their creation and, in my personal opinion, it is rather unsurprising to see how clearly the latter work is influenced by Voormann’s previous creation.

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