3 cover stories in our archive
Behind the Covers' archive includes 3 album covers documented under the "2000s" design theme, all from the 2000s. These covers sit within the folk, indie, r&b, pop, hip-hop tradition and feature work by Joanna Newsom, Beyoncé, Eve. Each entry below includes the cover artwork, the designers and photographers behind it, and a short story about the visual choices that defined the release.
Joanna Newsom's Ys cover is a hand-painted world dense with clues: Newsom sits in a throne-like chair holding a sickle and a tiny framed moth while a blackbird, flowers and a distant landscape surround her. Benjamin A. Vierling spent about a year building the image in an old-master style.
B'Day presents Beyoncé at the moment she was deliberately reshaping her solo image. Photographer Max Vadukul and art director Fuko Chubachi built the sleeve around a Southern, cinematic world of high hair, gold tones and controlled glamour, while Beyoncé herself chose the final portrait that became the album's defining image.
Eve's Scorpion cover refuses to settle on a single portrait. Three views of the rapper — a direct gaze, a side profile and an enlarged eye — overlap in a cool, metallic composition that turns her face into the album's entire visual language. Nitin Vadukul photographed Eve, while Barry Celestine, Charles 'Sleep' Duffy, Denise Trotman and Drew Fitzgerald handled art direction and design for the 2001 release.