6 album covers in our archive
David Bowie is featured in Behind the Covers' archive with 6 album covers spanning the 2010s and 1970s. Released across ISO / Columbia / Sony and RCA Records labels, the artwork sits in the rock, pop, alternative, electronic, punk tradition. Each cover is documented in our archive with design notes covering graphic design, minimalist, conceptual, logo, monochrome, gatefold. Below you'll find the full story behind each David Bowie cover — designers, photographers, label history, and the visual choices that defined the release.
David Bowie's final album cover shows no face, only a solid black star and a row of broken fragments. Designer Jonathan Barnbrook built it around mortality, hidden fields of stars, and a secret spelled out beneath the symbol. Bowie died two days after its release.
A borrowed Tokyo studio, no time to plan, and a pose lifted from a German Expressionist painting: how a single frame shot by Masayoshi Sukita in April 1977 became David Bowie's "Heroes" sleeve, a face that still looms half a century on.
The stark orange and black profile on Bowie's Low came from a film still of the artist in The Man Who Fell to Earth, creating one of rock's most minimalist and emotionally devastating covers through pure color saturation and negative space.
David Bowie posed as a half-man, half-dog for a 1974 painting so explicit that RCA airbrushed out the creature's genitals. The few uncensored copies that slipped into shops became some of the priciest records ever traded. The twist? The Belgian artist who painted it says Bowie tricked him into the job.
A red-and-blue lightning bolt splits David Bowie's face, a single teardrop pools on his collarbone, and a brief commissioned to make a superstar turned into the most expensive album cover ever sold. Here's how a lipstick outline and an Elvis ring became the 'Mona Lisa of Pop.'
On a cold, wet January night in 1972, a man stood alone under a furrier's sign in a London cul-de-sac, holding a borrowed guitar and pretending to be an alien. The black-and-white photograph that resulted was hand-painted into a sci-fi vision — and the shop owners were not amused.
