Duran Duran-Rio

Published: May 10, 1982

The Duran Duran album was released world wide on May 10th in 1982. The artist behind the cover is Patrick Nagel who was known for his illustrations and paintings that focus on the female form. He was also influenced by Japanese woodblock prints. His style eventually came to be recognized by his use of the "Nagel woman" seen on the cover of the album. Nagel was obsessed with form leading him to remove all elements that he found distracting leading to his stylized one dimensional image.

After Nagel painted the image, it was given to Malcolm Garrett who designed the cover and sleeve for the record. Garrett was influenced by the name and the idea of wrapping the image around the album like "Rio's cigars". Another interesting design choice is aligning the image so that when you take out the record you have to go through the image.