Any fan of new wave music would recognize the above image as Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures album cover, but there have been so many re-interpretations of the image as tattoos, clothing patterns, and more, that it would be hard to find someone who has never seen it. VISUALIZED interviews Peter Saville, the graphic designer who created the album art to find out the story behind the iconic symbol. It turns out the figure came from a Cambridge encyclopedia and represents “the comparative path demonstration of frequency from a signal of a pulsar” as seen from telescopes. See Saville’s fascinating interview and numerous interpretations of the image below.
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