The Story Behind Joy Division’s Iconic Unknown Pleasures Album Cover

Everyone and their uncle (particularly the kind of uncle who was into new wave back in the day) has seen the iconic cover for Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures, which has become one of the most identifiable pieces of cover art of its age and beyond. But have you ever wondered how this textured virtual landscape came to be? As part of their upcoming conference in New York, Visualized interviewed graphic designer Peter Saville about how this legendary cover became the image to represent Joy Division.

Throughout his career, Saville created cover art for New Order, Roxy Music, Pulp, and several others from the era, but Unknown Pleasures remains his most well-known work. In the interview, he described the band coming to him with the image below, which they found in the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy.

This revelatory interview is part of a series of videos that will premiere at the Visualized conference next month in New York, covering other fascinating stories “at the intersection of big data, storytelling and design.”

Read more about it here