Woke up today itching to do a fan project. Saw someone mention Harry Styles album covers changing over time, thought I’d dig deeper and make a visual timeline myself. Wanted to see his journey unfold visually, you know? Simple idea, figured it would be straightforward.
Getting Started, Thought It’d Be Quick
Step one: Grabbed my biggest mug of coffee and fired up the laptop. Remembered the very first Harry solo thing – wasn’t that the “Sign of the Times” single cover? Yeah, that black and white shot of him facing away. Found it easily enough online. Saved it onto my desktop. So far, so good.
Next: Searched for the Harry Styles album cover. Boom, found it right away. That classic shot of him lying down, flowers in his hair. Saved that too. Started lining up images in a folder, naming them by year. “2017_signtimes,” “2017_album1.” Feeling organized.
Then Came Fine Line, And Things Got… Weird
Hold on: Went looking for Fine Line stuff. Oh yeah, the single “Lights Up” cover – him kinda glowing, naked? Different. Then the actual Fine Line album art, crazy colourful with him jumping near the water. What was happening here? Saved them anyway: “2019_lightup,” “2019_fineline.” Piled them in the folder.
- Okay, four covers now.
- Definitely a shift from serious black & white to crazy colours.
- Started noticing a pattern? Maybe freedom.
Wanted to arrange them on my screen side by side. Tried dragging screenshots into a free online collage maker. Total disaster. Images resized weirdly, looked squished. Gave up after messing with settings for 20 minutes. Just opened each image in its own tab instead, flipping between them.
Harry’s House Was Unexpected
Moving on to 2022: Remembered Harry’s House. Found the cover online – that tiny little house with the blue door! What a change. Saved it as “2022_harryshouse.” Flipped back to all the open tabs: starting face down serious, then flower boy, then psychedelic water man, now… a dollhouse?
Stared at them all: One by one, back and forth. Black & white… to saturated colour… to this miniature, almost dreamlike world. He kept switching it up, never staying still visually. Kinda cool actually.
Tried making a simple graphic in another program to put them in order. Even that took me longer than planned. Resizing, aligning… saved it as “Harry_Styles_Timeline.” Looked alright, a bit rough.
What Jumped Out at Me
Here’s the thing: Seeing them together like this? Hits different. It wasn’t just changing clothes or poses; it felt like peeling layers.
- The beginning: Moody, mysterious.
- First album: Softness, exploring.
- Fine Line era: Pure explosion of colour and freedom.
- Harry’s House: Smaller, introspective, focused on feeling home inside.
Spilled some coffee noticing that journey from outward-facing image to this super personal, almost small space in Harry’s House. The scale shrunk while the personality blew up. Weird how that works visually.
Jotted some notes down in my messy handwriting on a piece of paper. “Mystery > Softness > Freedom > Home.” Wrote down a few ideas about feeling constrained at first to feeling super free later. Definitely didn’t expect that angle when I grabbed my first coffee!
It really does tell a story without saying a single word.