Peter Saville / Factory Records, 1979. Album sleeve in the Museum of Modern Art collection, object 834.2014. Image: MoMA.
The original / 1979
Unknown Pleasures record sleeve
No band name. No album title. Just a signal from space. Peter Saville turned an astronomy diagram into the sleeve of Joy Division’s debut album.
- Made by
- Peter Saville / Joy Division
- Year
- 1979
- Catalogued
Released on 15 June 1979 as Factory Records catalogue number FACT 10, Unknown Pleasures carried an unusually quiet front cover. The image was enough.
The stacked plot was made by radio astronomer Harold D. Craft Jr. from observations at Arecibo. It reached the band through The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Astronomy. Saville inverted the black-on-white diagram, surrounded it with space, and printed the sleeve on textured card. The diagram and the record sleeve have distinct authors; both belong in the story.
