A gatefold cover or gatefold LP is a form of packaging for

LP records The LP (from "long playing" or "long play") is an analog sound storage medium, a phonograph record format characterized by: a speed of rpm; a 12- or 10-inch (30- or 25-cm) diameter; use of the "microgroove" groove specification; and ...

that became popular in the mid-1960s. A gatefold cover, when folded, is the same size as a standard LP cover (i.e., a 12½ inch, or 32.7 centimetre square). The larger gatefold cover provided a means of including artwork,

liner notes Liner notes (also sleeve notes or album notes) are the writings found on the sleeves of LP record albums and in booklets that come inserted into the compact disc jewel case or the equivalent packaging for cassettes. Origin Liner notes are desc ...

, and/or song lyrics, which would otherwise not have fit on a standard record cover. It became famous as an extension of

progressive rock Progressive rock (shortened as prog rock or simply prog; sometimes conflated with art rock) is a broad genre of rock music that developed in the United Kingdom and United States through the mid- to late 1960s, peaking in the early 1970s. In ...

, as the expansive, transient gatefolds by artists such as Roger Dean,

H. R. Giger Hans Ruedi Giger ( ; ; 5 February 1940 – 12 May 2014) was a Swiss artist best known for his airbrushed images that blended human physiques with machines, an art style known as " biomechanical". Giger later abandoned airbrush for pastels, mark ...

, or

Hipgnosis Hipgnosis were an English art design group based in London, that specialised in creating album cover artwork for rock musicians and bands. Their commissions included work for Pink Floyd, T. Rex, the Pretty Things, Black Sabbath, UFO, 10c ...

became associated with concept albums. Gatefold sleeves were also frequently used when an album contained more than one record, with Bob Dylan's 1966 double album, '' Blonde on Blonde'', being the first multi-LP record to be released in a gatefold. Typically, double albums would feature one disc in each half of the cover, with larger albums either placing multiple LPs in one or both sleeves or using larger gatefolds. While some multi-LP releases (particularly those issued during the vinyl record's market dormancy from 1988 to 2007) would either package the discs in a simple sleeve or sandwich the records between two cards and shrink wrap, the prominence of gatefold for multi-LP albums led it to become the most common form of packaging for them. Starting in the early 1950s,

RCA The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...

used gatefold packaging for some of their deluxe 45 RPM

single Single may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * Single (music), a song release Songs * "Single" (Natasha Bedingfield song), 2004 * "Single" (New Kids on the Block and Ne-Yo song), 2008 * "Single" (William Wei song), 2016 * "Single", by ...

releases, such as

Nat King Cole Nathaniel Adams Coles (March 17, 1919 – February 15, 1965), known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an American singer, jazz pianist, and actor. Cole's music career began after he dropped out of school at the age of 15, and continued f ...

's eight-song " Unforgettable" EP, with two 45s, released in 1952. Gatefold packaging for LPs was popularized in the late 1950s by band leader and

stereophonic Stereophonic sound, or more commonly stereo, is a method of sound reproduction that recreates a multi-directional, 3-dimensional audible perspective. This is usually achieved by using two independent audio channels through a configuration ...

studio recording pioneer Enoch Light so he could fit liner notes he had written describing the sounds in each song on the album sleeve. Disagreement exists as to the identity of the first gatefold LP packaging used with a traditional 33⅓ LP. The LP gatefold has also been adapted to package

CDs The compact disc (CD) is a digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. In August 1982, the first compact disc was manufactured. It was then released in Octo ...

without a

jewelcase Optical disc packaging is the packaging that accompanies CDs, DVDs, and other formats of optical discs. Most packaging is rigid or semi-rigid and designed to protect the media from scratches and other types of exposure damage. Jewel case ...

Original use of the term

In the printing industry, the term ''gate fold'' or ''gatefold'' means a document folding method that uses two parallel folds to create six panels; the left and right panels are half the width of the center panels and fold inward to meet in the middle without overlapping.

References

{{Reflist, 30em Packaging Albums

Original use of the term

See also

References