Iconic album art on display in new exhibit of materials from EMI Music Canada Archive

There was a time not so long ago when vinyl, compact discs and cassette tapes ruled the music world. Fans would flock to their local record shops, lose track of time browsing through albums, admiring their covers and discussing their passion with other music lovers.

A new exhibit in the Taylor Family Digital Library takes you back to that time with original artwork and design mock-ups of iconic album covers from the '70s, '80s and '90s from the EMI Music Canada Archive. The archive, which was donated to the University of Calgary by Universal Music Canada in 2016, is housed within the university’s Archives and Special Collections.

Album covers can be just as memorable as the music inside them. So it’s no surprise they typically go through several incarnations on the path to final designs.

“The artwork files in the EMI Music Canada Archive include mock-ups, negatives used in cover art, and numerous unpublished variants that document the development of album artwork and the range of styles and techniques that were used in music marketing and promotions,” explains archivist Jason Nisenson.

To The Edge: Cover Art From the EMI Music Canada Archiveconsists of Canadian album artwork produced when the label was at its prime as the premier label for Canadian music of all genres. On display are samples from the master files for a generation of Canadian album artwork, including critical design work for the music of Anne Murray, k-os, Glass Tiger, and Red Rider.

Artwork includes jacket and sleeve designs for vinyl format recordings, cassette and CD packaging and labels as well as album-related posters and print advertisements. The exhibit also features audio from an interview with former Capitol Records-EMI of Canada product manager and in-house designer Ralph Alfonso. 

“One of the fascinating elements about the EMI Music Canada Archive is the behind-the-scenes glimpse we get of the music industry,” says archivist Robb Gilbert. “This exhibit chronicles the technological transition in graphic design as album artwork moved out the art of traditional printmaking in the late 1980s into the digital-based design work of today.”

Overall, the archive consists of approximately 5,500 boxes documenting the complete history of EMI Music Canada and associated music labels from 1949 to 2012. Included are over 40,000 audio and video recordings in more than 40 different formats, ranging from master recordings and production masters to rare demo tapes.

Last year, the university received a US$1,499,960 (C$1,967,391) grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a three-year media migration and digitization project to preserve the recordings in the EMI Music Canada Archive.

To The Edge: Cover Art From the EMI Music Canada Archive runs until April 30 in the Centre for Arts and Culture on the fifth floor of the TFDL. The display area is open to the public weekdays from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.