question: How did album covers were printed in the 70s, 80s?
comment: Art is painted. Art is then photographed. Enlarger is used to rephotograph the picture at the correct size. Printing plate(s) is made from the negative. Offset press is used to print the artwork onto cardboard. Cardboard is folded and glued to become the album cover.
passages: Section::::Early history.
   In 1938, Columbia Records hired Alex Steinweiss as its first art director. He is credited with inventing the concept of album covers and cover art, replacing the plain covers used before. After his initial efforts at Columbia, other record companies followed his lead. By the late 1940s, record albums for all the major companies featured their own colorful paper covers in both 10- and 12-inch sizes. Some featured reproductions of classic art while others utilized original designs.
   The talents of many photographers and illustrators from both inside and outside of the music industry have been used to produce a vast array of memorable LP/CD covers. Photographer Mick Rock produced some of the most iconographic album covers of the 1970s, including Queen's "Queen II" (recreated for their classic music video Bohemian Rhapsody), Syd Barrett's "The Madcap Laughs", and Lou Reed's "Transformer". From 1972 to 1975, photographer Norman Seeff was Creative Director at United Artists and in addition to his many cover photographs (The Band, Kiss's Hotter than Hell, Joni Mitchell's Hejira etc.), he art directed dozens of album covers including "Exile on Main Street", many of which received Grammy nominations. In addition to the examples mentioned previously, a number of world-renowned graphic artists and illustrators such as Ed Repka (Megadeth), Andy Warhol (The Velvet Underground, The Rolling Stones), Mati Klarwein (Santana, Miles Davis), H. R. Giger (Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Debbie Harry), Frank Frazetta (Molly Hatchet), Derek Riggs (Iron Maiden), Jamie Reid (The Sex Pistols), Howard Finster (R.E.M., Talking Heads), Al Hirschfeld (Aerosmith), Ken Kelly (Kiss, Manowar), Gottfried Helnwein (Marilyn Manson), Rex Ray (David Bowie), Robert Crumb (Big Brother & the Holding Company), John Van Hamersveld (The Rolling Stones), and Shepard Fairey (Johnny Cash) have all applied their talents to memorable music packages.
   A number of record covers have also used images licensed (or borrowed from the public domain) from artists of bygone eras. Well-known examples of this include the cover of Derek and the Dominos "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs" (from the painting "La Fille au Bouquet" by French painter and sculptor Émile Théodore Frandsen de Schomberg), 'The Downfall of Icarus' by Genisson on the cover of the first album by Renaissance; Bosch on the cover of Deep Purple; Breugel on the cover of Fleet Foxes; the cover of Kansas's debut album, adapted from a mural by painter John Steuart Curry, Norman Rockwell's cowboy (Pure Prairie League), and, more recently, Coldplay's "Viva La Vida", which features Eugène Delacroix's painting "Liberty Leading the People" (a favorite in The Louvre) with the words "VIVA LA VIDA" brushed on top in white paint.
   BULLET::::- Celant, Germano, "et al". "The Record as Artwork: from Futurism to Conceptual Art, [exemplified by LP discs in] the Collection of Germano Celant". Fort Worth, Tex.: Fort Worth Art Museum, 1977. "N.B".: This is the llustrated catalogue of an exhibition which first showed from 4 Dec. to 15 Jan. 1977 in Fort Worth and then in art galleries at Philadelphia, Montréal, and Chicago.
  
  BULLET::::- Walker, John. "Rock Art / Rock Design / Rock Fashion". "Glossary of Art, Architecture & Design since 1945", 3rd. ed.
  
  BULLET::::- All iTunes Album Covers search engine;
   Eschewing the usual gatefold design in favour of a special die-cut cover, the original album jacket included four covers made up of two inners (for each disc), a middle insert cover and an outer cover. The middle insert cover is white and details all the album track listings and recording information. The outer cover has die-cut windows on the building, so when the middle cover is wrapped around the inner covers and slid into the outer cover, the title of the album is shown on the front cover, spelling out the name "Physical Graffiti". Images in the windows touched upon a set of American icons and a range of Hollywood ephemera. Pictures of W. C. Fields and Buzz Aldrin alternated with the snapshots of Led Zeppelin. Photographs of Lee Harvey Oswald, Marcel Duchamp and Pope Leo XIII are also featured. 
   By the early 1990s, tens of thousands of paper and then vinyl stickers were photocopied and hand-silkscreened and put in visible places throughout the world.
   The importance of design was such that some cover artists specialised or gained fame through their work. Such people include the design team Hipgnosis, through their work on Pink Floyd albums, amongst others; Roger Dean, famous for his Yes and Greenslade covers; Cal Schenkel, for Captain Beefheart's "Trout Mask Replica" and Frank Zappa's "We're Only in It for the Money".
   Album cover art was the subject of a 2013 documentary film, "The Cover Story: Album Art", by Eric Christensen, a San Francisco Bay Area record collector.
   In 1973, Taylor and Douglas met art student William Stout, who expressed an interest in designing their album covers; his first being the Rolling Stones' "Winter Tour 1973" double album. Stout subsequently designed all the TMOQ cartoon covers in his unique style. The most famous is probably The Rolling Stones' "Welcome to New York" in 1973 which was also the label's first printed deluxe cover. Asked about his favourite TMOQ artwork, Stout said: ""Welcome to New York", with Paul McCartney and Wings' "Great Dane" a close second. There were so many good Stones covers because the Stones had a great, fully realised image to play with. And bootleggers loved the Stones, so they put out many more Stones LPs compared to ones by other groups." Stout's last ones were in 1976 when TMOQ released six albums in its deluxe series.
   Richard Avedon was an American photographer. Avedon capitalized on his early success in fashion photography and expanded into the realm of fine art. This is a solarised poster portraits of the Beatles, originally produced for 9 January 1967 edition of the American magazine "Look".
   In an essay written to accompany the exhibition, Mott describes the process of designing the album cover: "De La Soul visit our loft where we lay them down on the floor facing up, their heads making a triangle. We photograph them whilst hanging precariously off a step ladder, one idea being that the cover would not have a right way up. CD's have yet to be the dominant musical format so the vinyl album sleeve is our most effective way of making a statement [...] The intent of the design of De La Soul's, "3 Feet High and Rising" LP cover is to be new and bright, with the overlaying of the fluorescent flowers and text reflecting a synthetic pop cartoon look [...] This is a move away from the prevailing macho hip hop visual codes which dominate to this day".
   The original album cover, depicting the birth of a record album (shown at right), was deemed too controversial and was first included with a manila file folder covering most of the cover. This was soon reworked with a huge Band-Aid covering the "birth". The cover also includes an attached "birth record sheet" of the album. The label shown on the original cover's album is the same custom label used on the actual album. The CD reissue by MCA Records in the 1990s restored the cover to its original look showing the record. Albums that had already been produced had a Band-Aid attached to them. Subsequent albums had the Band-Aid printed directly on the cover.
   BULLET::::- "Never Trust a Pretty Face" by Amanda Lear (1979)Covers As per standard album front & Back cover issued in thick plastic cover with sticker with track list .
  
  BULLET::::- "Gold" by Jefferson Starship - a picture of the 1976-78 lineup of the band on both sides.
  
  BULLET::::- "Driver's Seat" by Sniff 'n' the Tears (1979) - a leggy woman holding a gun startles a black cat
  
  BULLET::::- "Off the Wall" by Michael Jackson (1979) - same image of original album front and back
   The photograph on the album's cover is by John Cohen and shows visual artist Mary Frank (spouse of Robert Frank), circa 1960. The back cover's photograph features artist Red Grooms crossing Third Avenue in 1960.
  
  Section::::Concept.
   The single's front cover features "Untitled #17" by American artist Richard Diebenkorn. Crafted in 1981, the image was created using gouache, crayon and graphite on paper, and also appears in the liner notes to "Shields", alongside other Diebenkorn works.
  
  Section::::Music video.
   The concept for the album cover was conceived jointly by Konietzko and longtime band associate and cover artist Aidan "Brute!" Hughes. Hughes stated that he achieved an appearance similar to the angelic look of Renaissance paintings of the Madonna with the artwork.
   Steinweiss was active in record cover design from 1938 until 1973, when he semi-retired to devote himself to painting. By his own admission, he designed roughly 2500 covers. His career can be divided into roughly five periods:
  
  From 1938 to perhaps 1945, he designed all the covers for Columbia. During this period, he developed the entire graphic "language" of album design.
   After the shoot, Macmillan went to find a road sign for use on the back cover. It was taken on the corner with Alexandra Road. During photographing the sign, a girl in a blue dress walked through the shot. Iain was angry but later it was chosen as the back cover. The wall with the sign was demolished several years later.
  
  Macmillan worked for John and Yoko until 1971, doing such work as:
  
  BULLET::::- The cloud on the album cover for "Live Peace in Toronto".
  
  BULLET::::- Photos on the album "Some Time in New York City".
   Section::::Album covers in the age of downloads.
   Legends from photography and video/film who have also produced record cover images include Drew Struzan (Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper, Iron Butterfly, The Beach Boys and others), Annie Leibovitz (John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith), Richard Avedon (Whitney Houston, Teddy Pendergrass), David LaChappelle (No Doubt, Elton John), Anton Corbijn (U2, The Killers, Depeche Mode), Karl Ferris (Jimi Hendrix, Donovan, The Hollies), Robert Mapplethorpe (Patti Smith, Peter Gabriel) and Francesco Scavullo (Diana Ross, Edgar Winter), David Michael Kennedy others.
   Album art is still considered a vital part of the listening experience to many, and despite the less-tangible nature of digital images, there are still many collectors trading cover art and music.
   was the producer's. I actually had a different cover in mind...It was...a black and white [photograph] of my daughter Olivia sitting on a guitar case, with this Gretsch anniversary model standing up behind her against this concrete wall, and she's got a little white flower wreath in her hair. She's about four years old, and...I just loved that cover. So when the album came out, I wasn't really knocked out by the Beatles thing, because it didn't look like the Beatles to me! It was my goofy face and then these three guys in the background, one of which was Lynn Nichols, the producer. And I thought, "Oh, I don't care for this." I wanted to have the other cover. I wanted it to say "Phil Keaggy and Sunday's Child," and to me, that was Olivia, being as she's my daughter. So my nephew works in a printing place, and I created this cover that had all the same photos and information inside the CD insert, but I had him make 500 of these new covers, and we took the shrink wrap off...500 CDs, and...inserted these covers that I wanted and took them on the road and sold them, and we mailed them out through the fan club, since we didn't have a website in those days."
   German record company Odeon pioneered the "album" in 1909 when it released the "Nutcracker Suite" by Tchaikovsky on four double-sided discs in a specially designed package. (It is not indicated what the specially designed package was.) The practice of issuing albums does not seem to have been taken up by other record companies for many years.
   With the advent of long-playing records, the album cover became more than just packaging and protection, and album cover art became an important part of the music marketing and consuming experience. In the 1970s it became more common to have picture covers on singles. Many singles with picture sleeves (especially from the 1960s) are sought out by collectors, and the sleeves alone can go for a high price. LPs can have embossed cover art (with some sections being raised), an effect rarely seen on CD covers. The label area on the disc itself may contain themed or custom artwork rather than the standard record company's logo layout.
  