Hybrid Theory - Artwork

Artwork

With Hybrid Theory being Linkin Park's first album, Mike Shinoda, who had worked as a graphic designer before becoming a professional musician, has stated that the band had looked through books for inspiration on how to present themselves for the first time. The result was a winged-soldier which Shinoda illustrated himself. According to Chester Bennington, the idea of the soldier with dragonfly wings was to describe the blending of hard and soft musical elements by the use of the jaded looks of the soldier and frail touches of the wings. The cover also features scrambled lyrics of the album's songs within the background, though the lyrics of "One Step Closer" are the most prominent. A different version of the soldier can be seen on some of the album's singles. The cover of Reanimation, a remix album of Hybrid Theory, features a robotic version of the soldier that is similar in-appearance to a mobile suit Gundam, a line of robotic combat machines that are featured in the Gundam Wing anime series, which achieved a high popularity in the United States prior to the album's release.