How the Rolling Stones' 1967 Album 'Their Satanic Majesties Request' Used 3D Lenticular Printing for Its Cover

The cover of Their Satanic Majesties Request was one of the first pop albums to use lenticular printing, a technique that creates the illusion of movement when the image is tilted. The front cover shows the band members dressed in psychedelic robes, surrounded by a fantasy landscape, and the entire image shifts as you move the sleeve — the ghost of a castle appears, the faces morph, and the colors warp. It was a gimmick that cost a fortune to produce; each sleeve had to be hand-assembled with a corrugated plastic lens glued over the printed card, making it notoriously fragile and expensive.

The psychedelic artwork was the brainchild of photographer Michael Cooper, who also shot the cover of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band that same year. Cooper staged the photo using a composite of separate shots of each band member, then worked with a specialist printer to generate the lenticular grid. The title and the band’s name appear in a 3D-like font