«I BELIEVE MEDIA IS ART» ( THE WHITE ALBUM)

Richard Hamilton, a notable pop artist who had organized a Marcel Duchamp retrospective at the Tate Gallery the previous year, was responsible for the albums original sleeve design. It is the only sleeve of a Beatles studio album not to show the members of the band on the front. His design was in stark contrast to Peter Blake’s vivid cover art for Sgt. Pepper, and consisted of a plain white sleeve with the band’s name discreetly embossed slightly below the middle of the album’s right side. The cover also featured a unique stamped serial number, “to create,” in Hamilton’s words, “the ironic situation of a numbered edition of something like five million copies.”

«Paul McCartney requested the design be as stark a contrast to Sgt Pepper’s day-glo explosion as    possible… he got it!»

-Richard Hamilton