23. ABKCO RECORDS
The early ’60s saw an electric blizzard of pop culture, where fashion, art, and music blended as never before. The Rolling Stones, especially Mick Jagger, with plenty of campy moves borrowed from the queens at Kings Cross, were all wrong-side-of-the tracks style and attitude, the bad boys of the British Invasion. Their look projected beautifully onto the echochamber sound of their early hits.

Released as singles, each one was a little work of art in itself, thanks to the atmospheric photography and inspired design of the period. These limited-edition box sets contain all of those singles released in the United States and England, individually packaged as midget 45s in sleeves featuring the original artwork.

The biggest challenge for art directors Iris Keitel and Alisa Coleman was having the actual CDs made to replicate old vinyl 45s. “It was such an ordeal to get the authentic look of vinyl on a plastic disk,” Keitel says. “Finding a manufacturing company that had the resources to achieve the look was extremely difficult.”

Coleman says of the She’s a Rainbow sleeve from Volume Two: “I think this is a good example of what was going on in the ’60s. Specifically, the experimentation with color, type, and elaborate set design.” Romy Ashby