Time On Earth - Cover Art

Cover Art

As he did for the first four Crowded House albums, Nick Seymour, also an artist, created the cover art for Time on Earth. The group's name "Crowded House" appears with jumbled case, some lower and some upper case, appearing as "cRoWdED HOusE". Similarly, the album title is also in a partial jumble with all but the last two letters in upper case, appearing as "TIME ON EARth."

The cover also features a blue dragon eating a human, the design of which was a direct reference to the sea serpent image from Olaus Magnus's book History of the Northern Peoples. The use of a dragon eating a man is to symbolise former member Hester being consumed by depression, symbolised by the dragon being blue, and this brought his time on earth to an early end. The cover art is almost completely composed of newspaper cuttings collaged together, even the image of the man and the dragon are newspaper cuttings which Seymour painted onto. Only the tree on the right, and the title text are not composed of newspaper cuttings. The tree is to pose as a simile for the tree under which Hester took his life in 2005.

In November 2007, a special edition of Time on Earth was released featuring a colour altered cover. The cover's main background area, which was previously a sandy-wheat colour, was converted into an aqua-teal colour, while the tree in the image had a bird in a nest added to it.