Black Ice (album) - Packaging

Packaging

The cover art of Black Ice was drawn by Joshua Marc Levy, art director for Columbia and a longtime fan of the band who volunteered for the project among "many people at Sony who desired to work on it". There are four different covers, the standard edition has a red logo, the deluxe edition has a blue logo and two variants to the regular design include yellow or white logos. Angus said the options were not to deliver the message that fans would need to purchase all covers. He said, "We know most people will only purchase the record once, in their colour of choice. For me, it's not relevant. What matters is that fans enjoy it. Music is the essence."

After working with the cover for the album, provisionally titled Runaway Train, Levy went on vacation and travelled with Pearl Jam on their 2008 tour. After a concert in Washington D.C., Levy came up with the idea "to do it all graphic black on black" and sketched what would became the yellow artwork. The record company liked it and Levy was requested him to do two more in the same style, which became the red and white versions. During the promotional photography sessions, Levy made the deluxe edition art. The tracks on the album did not have much influence on the artwork as Levy had heard "maybe 5 songs at that point", but he found it curious that his artwork fit the title track "Black Ice", which was not among the tracks he had heard.

In an interview with a fan site, Levy compared his design to a road covered with black ice, which is "not obvious to the driver" and takes a while to be understood. The artist also said that since the album had many similarities with Back in Black – "Black" in the title, dark covers, and AC/DC resurfacing with a sound based on the band's early work – the art was "like a time travel, which is why there are so many psychedelic drawings". While the artwork's resemblance to a train was something he "never thought of it that way", Levy later elaborated that it was a train "that travels around the world to spread the rock machine". The centre of the standard red logo has a watch behind the lightning of the AC/DC logo, representing a "temporal explosion", with the tribal motifs representing a special tribe, the AC/DC fans. Wings form clouds above the watch to represent "eternal time". Angus appears atop the watch "controlling time" and on the sides wearing a straitjacket to "represent the folly of the group and the strength of his sound, this mix of guitars that makes you lose your footing". The image of Angus on the cog has a fist in the air resembling the statue on Stiff Upper Lip because Levy "just thought it was great as a continuing icon." To fit the title Black Ice, the image was printed with lacquer and varnish to give an ice-like quality, and the AC/DC logo is filled with photographs of ice crystals. The photographs for the booklet and promotional photography were taken by music photographer Guido Karp, in August 2008 in London.