Album Cover Bank traces over 70 years of Nigeria’s album design and visual culture

It’ll be a sad day when we stop revelling in the album covers that contribute to our visual cultures. And that day is lurking in the near future, with most of these artworks nestled in our phones, on music streaming apps, where our algorithms do the majority of the talking. Time spent sitting in a loved one’s front room, going through their collection and being enticed to give a record a listen because of its offbeat artwork, is increasingly scarce. Or entering a shop and being able to tell the genre of a record quite instantly because of its design and art direction. Nude and erotic, with a primal edge? Ohio funk, namely the bands Sun, Ohio Players or Slave. Leaning slash laying with a tender yet authoritative look? It’s probably one of the Black baritones of the 80s, ushering in contemporary R&B’s disco, funk and pop-infused flair. These visual cues aren’t just the obsessions of a nostalgia merchant though, and they go far beyond music – they are the reflection of a culture, its history, sensibilities and collective desires.

Adamant on preserving and platforming Nigeria’s visual culture, maker collective wuruwuru set to explore graphic trends in Nigerian pop culture and its impact on the nation’s music through the decades. After a mighty period of research, essays and collation, the team decided that the concept was too broad, and opted to create a database of Nigeria’s album covers instead. Hosted on their site, Album Cover Bank amasses over 5300 covers, from 1950 to present. But it isn’t only the number and breadth of time that’s groundbreaking, it’s the celebration of Nigeria’s graphic design history that provides a context for the present-day albums that are considered international classics.

The majority of the wuruwuru team are born and raised in Lagos and can trace their design tastes to roots planted during their upbringings. “In Nigeria, your state of origin is where your dad’s born, and that can be different from your state of birth, so I’m from Osun state,” Opemipo Aikomo, founder of wuruwuru and producer on the project, tells us. “Lagos is a city of migrants, so many of us have this sort of dual identity.” Growing up, he was into cartoons, and games, but still honours books as making the greatest impression on him. As well as being fond of magazines, such as Reader’s Digest, “this probably explains my love for graphic design,” and his architect father and “genius mum,” he adds.

When it comes to Album Cover Bank, Opemipo was structurally inspired by film archives such as Maya Cade’s Black Film Archive and the image research site, Film. And when it came to cultural inspirations, his sights were close to home, with West African archives, such as Auto Typographics, a collection of inscriptions on cars throughout Ghana, and Nigerian graphic design archives Sakiru Somolu and Hello Lagos. So, there’s no wonder why Album Cover Bank feels like it is a part of a lineage, a contribution that transcends design or design for music, but a feat that honours the unique social and artistic expression of the time. “The main goal of the archive is to establish the history of Nigerian graphic design,” Opemipo adds, “but we also want to celebrate the album cover artists as important cultural producers”. When entering the site, the search filter is probably one of the most practical expressions of this; viewers can enter a year, musician, select a genre or (importantly to the team’s mission) a designer.

No matter which avenue the audience takes to trace Nigeria’s album covers, there’s no way to evade the fact that there has been a seismic shift over time. On the Album Cover Bank homepage, newer releases such as Tems’ not an angel, boasting a purely photographic cover with no lettering and, similarly minimally-designed covers such as Fireboy DML’s outside sit surrounded by older covers like the Lijadu Sister’s classic Horizon Unlimited that has a black-and-white photographic cut-out of the twin artists, a scenic background and playful lettering, all of which is synonymous with the highlife genre during the 1970s. In short, everything’s gone super digital.

As vinyl covers were previously more critical to a project’s commercial success, Opemipo notes that many of them were made in printing houses like Ibunkunola Printers, Record Manufacturers Nigeria and Poaston Graphics Art Trade. “And only few individuals like Lemi Ghariokwu really stood out,” he tells us. But as the dynamics have shifted, labels now consult freelance artists “like Funto Coker, Niyi Okeowo and Duks to make the covers and showcase their unique style”. He adds, “today most covers are simple art contracts versus full-on branding projects. I think they have lost some of their reverence as more engaging forms of media like music and videos become so popular.”