Artwork and Packaging
The packaging concept is a pastiche of the generic brand products manufactured in the early 1980s; it is similar to those sold at the Ralphs supermarket chain (dark-blue lettering and light blue stripe over white ground) in the USA.
In pop culture this design was popularised by the cult punk film Repo Man.
Producer Bill Laswell: “We purposely didn't put the credits of the musicians on the record because nobody would have believed it and most of the critics probably would have only talked about the people on the record and not the music.”
In 1982, Flipper, a punk band from San Francisco, California, had released an album with the same concept and a near-identical name, Album - Generic Flipper, a pastiche of generic products manufactured for Lucky Stores supermarket chain (black lettering over yellow ground). Later in 1986, Flipper retaliated by releasing a live album entitled Public Flipper Limited Live 1980-1985.
The concept of the packaging also spread to other releases by the band from this period, the 7" single of "Rise" was called "Single" whilst the 12" single was called "12 inch Single", and the music video had the title card reading "video". A compilation of music videos by the band released in this period was titled Videos. All of them were like the LP, CD and cassette covers due to the white background, dark blue generic fonts also had the light blue stripe reading 'public image limited' beneath with the PiL logo to the right. The MP3 reissue of the album is titled MP3. Unusually, the 2012 CD remaster of the album is titled Album when it should correctly, if following the original scheme, should read Compact Disc. A tribute album by the band is also homage to the album covers, titled Tribute.
Read more about this topic: Album (Public Image Ltd Album)