Record Envelopes: For Vinyl Devotees and Artists Alike

Electronic this and downloadable that have served to smother what used to be music coupled with art. Once upon a time, the design of a cassette tape fold-out or a compact disc insert was as much a reason to purchase a particular album as the music itself…but today marks the separation of sight and sound, making music-accompanied visuals vintage, especially where vinyl is concerned.

Kavel Rafferty, commercial artist, collects herself company sleeves from the record era. An eye for deliberate design, Rafferty understandably deems record envelopes wall-worthy, and she’s sharing her little library of factory sleeves with the Web, by way of the Crossed Combs site. From the basic black on brown incarnations of both London Records and Columbia Records, to the colorful caricature-esque horn player belonging to Swedish EMI, these little record slips are big on design; Kavel’s collection is something to behold by record collectors and artists alike.

-Thea Beemer