Art Vinyl has revealed the winners of its 19th Best Art Vinyl Award, the annual art prize for the best record cover design of the year.
Artist and university professor Michelle Henning has won first place for her work on PJ Harvey’s album, I Inside The Old Year Dying. Henning received the prize at an event held at the Hari in Belgravia, London.
The artwork for part two of the debut studio album by US trio Gabriels, Angels & Queens, came second. It featured striking black and white photography by Melodie McDaniel.
In third place was English DJ, record producer and musician Nicolaas Douwma, known as Sub Focus, and his fourth album Evolve, which was created by Mat Maitland from the creative consultancy Big Active.
The winning album artwork was chosen from a shortlist of 50 nominations of vinyl record cover art from 2023, chosen by a panel of artists, designers and music industry experts. Best Art Vinyl winners join an archive of celebrated visual artists, notably including the Hipgnosis design studio, classical Dutch artist Pieter Bruegel, and others.
“Simplicity and thoughtful concepts provide the many layers for this year’s Best Art Vinyl Award winners,” said Best Art Vinyl founder, Andrew Heeps. “We have three very different designs, all of which deserve greater artistic scrutiny this year. While the winning album artwork for PJ Harvey and runner up Gabriels focus on the single iconic image with multiple conceptual layers, third place Sub Focus uses an evolving single image via a lenticular design. Each of these worthy winners bring levels of artistic complexity and techniques together to bring the music inside their beautiful packages to life.”
