U2’s Passengers: Original Soundtracks 1 album cover reflects the album’s exploratory ethos by delving into cosmic, unfamiliar imagery that fits its boundary-pushing soundscape.
The cover artwork, drawn from Czech artist Teodor Rotrekl's 1963 illustration for Ivo Štuka's book Six Days on Luna 1, visually captures the surreal and speculative qualities that permeate the album.
Rotrekl's artwork, originally depicting otherworldly exploration in the Space Age’s early years, gives the album a retro-futuristic mystique, amplifying the album’s departure from U2's conventional work. The art direction—helmed by long time U2 porudcer Brian Eno and Martin Callomon (nicknamed "Cally")—intentionally sought this sense of the unfamiliar, grounding the album in visual storytelling that echoes the conceptual nature of its musical content.
Produced in collaboration with Brian Eno and released under the moniker "Passengers" to differentiate it from traditional U2 releases, the album's experimental approach extends beyond sound to visual presentation.
Callomon, a seasoned art director for Island Records, contributed to curating the visual tone with Eno, both steering clear of the band’s usual imagery in favor of something more abstract and evocative of science fiction.
The artwork’s space-age surrealism connects deeply to the soundscapes within, offering a visual preview of an album that inhabits imagined worlds and hypothetical soundtracks.
While Original Soundtracks was a high experimental work, it produced the classic U2 song Miss Sarajevo and Your Blue Room, each finding a place on U2's Greatest Hits release.
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