'Album art brings together two artists, the designer and the musician.'

Album art will have been around for ages, but i'd like to find out when it actually started to make an impact on albums and when people actually put some thought into it rather than just putting a photograph with a CD and calling it an album.
So I've been searching the internet to find abit of background on album artwork. Here's what I've found, put into a few paragraphs in my own words :)

Sources say it was first introduced (not 'created') in the 1940's. They started off as drawn illustrations and then in the 50's moved on to being photographs. The photographs normally showed a 'typical' life. For a start, everyone was white, were in suits or cocktail dresses and usually featured 'perfect' children.
One guy called Sgt. Pepper (The Beatles. An alternative persona of the band members) decided to change it into something more creative, like the music itself and started to bring together two artists, the musician and the designer. He started to forget head-shots, portraits, and band photos, and focused (or not focused) on things that weren't reality based. 'Sgt. Pepper' came up with a sheet of paper cut out dolls and cut out moustache. He printed lyrics on the back.
After 'Sgt. Peppers' ideas, it became a kind of competition as to who could get the best-selling album art. The Rolling Stones even produced an album with a 3-D cover dressed as wizards in an effort to 'beat' The Beatles Album art even insprired fashions in the 60's. People were more adventurous about what they wore. Creative such as David Bowie followed the trend, another thing which influenced crazy fashions.

At the beginning of the 90's when CD's replaced vinyl as the main music player,
Even 20 years later, vinyls still arn't considered out-dated in a way. People use them in lots of different ways. This generation still think they're cool looking. I've even seen bags made out of old records in a shop. They're still considered creative and unique. Not many people know the roots of album art, but as I've researched this, I've found it really interesting and I'm glad I took the time to read up about it.


Information from; 


- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sgt._Pepper's_Lonely_Hearts_Club_Band
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cover_art
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Album_cover