Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album carried on the childhood and Liverpool theme with its circus and fairground effects, its pervading atmosphere of the traditional northern music hall that was in both its main creators' [McCartney and Lennon's] blood." "Sgt. Pepper" album cover was designed by the pop artists Peter Blake and Jann Haworth. Blake recalled of the concept: "I offered the idea that if they had just played a concert in the park, the cover could be a photograph of the group just after the concert with the crowd who had just watched the concert, watching them. If we did this by using cardboard
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band the act of listening, but an integral component of the listening that expanded the musical experience". The cover helped to elevate album art as a respected topic for critical analysis whereby the "structures and cultures of popular music" could henceforth justify intellectual discourse in a way that – before "Sgt. Pepper" – would have seemed like "fanciful conceit". He writes: "Sgt. Pepper" "cover has been regarded as groundbreaking in its visual and aesthetic properties, congratulated for its innovative and imaginative design, credited with providing an early impetus for the expansion of the graphic design industry into popular music, and perceived