Flickr user jl.incrowd posted a beautiful photo set of vintage album covers designed by “pioneering graphic designer” Alex Steinweiss. [GoodMagazine]

In 1939, Steinweiss was hired as Columbia Records’ first art director. In the years shortly after, it’s believed Steinweiss invented the concept of album cover art. He would go on to design roughly 2,500 covers over the next 34 years.

Prior to his efforts for Columbia Records beginning in 1939, the covers to multi-disc 78-rpm ‘album’ sets of records were fairly generic - - often referred to as ‘tombstone’ covers, with just a plain square label with text.

Steinweiss’ ideas and the bold visual language he created soon caught on, the idea became the norm, and eventually the sky was the limit for the manner in which the cover image on a record could be used to represent the music within.