Seasons End (album) - Cover Art

Cover Art

As Mark Wilkinson, who had designed all previous Marillion covers, had left together with Fish, the album also marked a turning point in the band's visual style, towards a more "modern", photographic look created by Bill Smith Studio. The four square fields dominating the cover symbolise the four classical elements, earth, air, water and fire (clockwise from top left). At the same time, the cover contained some references to the past: It used the band's original logo, which had been replaced with a "modernised" version on the previous album Clutching at Straws and related releases as well as on B'Sides Themselves (although the 1988 live retrospective The Thieving Magpie also used it). The feather in the "desert" square is a reference to the image of the "magpie" found on Misplaced Childhood (1985), the "sky" square contains a fragment of the "Jester's" dress introduced on Script for a Jester's Tear (1983), the chameleon in the "fire" square appears on Script for a Jester's Tear, Fugazi (1984) and Misplaced Childhood; the painting with the clown's face falling into the water upside-down is taken from the Fugazi cover. Also, the vinyl version returned to the gatefold format that had been abandoned on the previous studio album.