The Mountains of Madness cover, which depicts the close up of a man's affronting expression, is tinted in dark hypnotic hues of red and green.
In 1996, Lou Reed commissioned Sagmeister for the cover art of Set the Twilight Reeling, followed by David Byrne’s 1997 album Feelings. Byrne’s G.I. Joe style look-a-like doll would not be the final time both artists collaborated, and Sagmeister would go on to receive a Grammy for art directing the Once in a Lifetime Talking Heads box set in 2005.
A second Grammy was awarded to him five years later for his design of David Byrne’s and Brian Eno’s album Everything That Happens Will Happen Today in 2010.
“Even though our work is often shown in art museums,” Sagmeister tells Artnet, “I see everything we do as design, simply because all of it needs to have some functionality. Pure art can just be and is not dragged down into the gutter by something as lowly as function.” Sagmeister has lived a long career of dedicating himself to the aesthetics of function.