Packaging and Artwork
The artwork for Pretty on the Inside is abstract in comparison to Hole's later album artwork. The front cover of the album features a heavily saturated pink press photo of the band amidst forest underbrush, taken by photographer Vickie Berndt. Berndt said that "Courtney wanted something striking and unusual" and Berndt was experimenting with color infrared film during the shoot, testing exposure settings with Love. The photo is similar to several others taken during the same shoot, one of which was featured in a Spin article in 1991.
The front design featured on the front cover was created by Pizz, a graphic artist from Long Beach, who also designed album cover art for several other indie rock bands. The back side of the album features a painting by bassist Emery, displaying an abstract image of a topless woman looking at herself through a hand mirror. On her chest is a red heart surrounded by arrows, and below, her ribs protrude from her sides, possibly a reference to anorexia and body image issues, a heavy theme on the album and its successor Live Through This.
The interior artwork, presented in a booklet on the CD version of the album and on the record sleeve on vinyl releases, features an assemblage of scribbled and typewritten lyrics, personal "thank you" notes, cutouts of Catholic and Renaissance artwork, as well as childlike drawings and storybook pictures juxtaposed with photos of women in bondage. The collages in the album's liner notes have been described as looking like "the scrapbook of an incest victim." In the liner notes, the album is dedicated to Rob Ritter of the LA punk group The Bags.
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