Though artists are constantly morphing and experimenting, many like to keep a consistent theme running through their music and visual aesthetic. These six artists took this idea of visual consistency to heart, creating album covers that immediately identify an album as one of theirs.
1. The Smiths
Morrissey designed all of the sleeves for the Smiths' albums and singles with Jo Slee of Rough Trade, and they all had a very simple aesthetic. Morrissey would take an image of a an old pop star, actor, or any pop culture figure, and choose two colors for the text and photography (for example, The Queen is Dead featured pink text with green photography). Some of the Smiths' "cover stars" included Elvis Presley, Truman Capote, and James Dean. Belle & Sebastian would adopt a similar aesthetic for its artwork, but with brighter colors and original photographs.
2. Iron Maiden
Heavy metal artwork is the most consistently entertaining of any genre, especially the masterfully designed covers for bands like Death, Ghoul, and of course, Iron Maiden. Each of Iron Maiden's album covers features an image of the band's mascot Eddie, a ghoulish figure whose image morphs for each cover to serve the artwork. Eddie has been depicted as a soldier, a mental patient, and a sphinx, among many others.
3. Björk
Though Björk's transforms her own image as often as David Bowie did, the way in which she positions herself on her album covers has remained mostly consistent. For each of her albums except Vespertine and Volta, Björk is photographed head-on, looking directly into the camera, and usually wearing something outlandish. Though it's probably just a coincidence that the only albums she didn't do this for are the ones that begin with V, she's the type of artist that would think to do something strange like that on purpose.
4. Roxy Music
Although Roxy Music was one of the image conscious and ridiculously dressed bands of its era, the band never appeared on any of its album covers. Instead, the covers featured glamorous female models, usually photographed in a pin-up style, and often with very little clothing. The only cover to somewhat break this trend was the band's final album Avalon, which features a woman wearing a Viking helmet and holding afalcon, but facing away from the camera.
5. The White Stripes
Jack White is famously eccentric, and has enforced very strict color coordination for his various endeavors. His first solo record and tour had a blue theme, while the Nashville headquarters for his label Third Man has a yellow and black theme, and most famously, the White Stripes had a red, white, and black theme, which translated to all of the band's videos and artwork. White was so serious about this color scheme that he once refused to sign a record deal because the label's green logo would appear on the spine of the CD.
6. A Tribe Called Quest
A Tribe Called Quest is one of the most socially and politically conscious rap groups of all time, and this is reflected not just in its music, but in its artwork as well. Three of the group's studio albums feature an image of a woman with a red, green, and black color scheme, the colors of the Pan-African flag. Though these three images are drawings, a photograph of singer Erykah Badu with red, green, and black make-up was used as the cover of the 1999 compilation album The Anthology.
