They had been invited to the launch and observed it from a VIP area at an air base in Cape Kennedy, Florida. The song features samples of radio communications recorded before and during the flight. The sleeve was designed by Hugh Syme, who is credited with its concept, direction, and graphics, with photography from Deborah Samuel. Syme based his design upon receiving merely the album's title, and recalled a "great deal of trouble" in a cover that he and the group were satisfied with. "I decided that, with such a phenomenally important word with the kind of potency it potentially had, to go with something really dumb, really inane". He noted, however, that the cover still tied into the meaning of some of the songs on the album, in particular "Chemistry". The final concept came out from the result of several failed ideas, including one that Syme devised which would have involved Rush hooked up to electroencephalography machines as they played in the studio and a snapshot of their heartbeats and brain waves taken during a performance. The front photograph depicts a Dalmatian dog sniffing a red fire hydrant on a green lawn. Samuel shot the image on the rooftop of her studio. The lawn is a piece of AstroTurf, and the hydrant was rented from Toronto and repainted the desired colour for the cover. She recalled a search to find a Dalmatian who could sniff on command, and placed dog biscuits underneath the hydrant multiple times to get the final shot. The back cover is a pretend blueprint of a neighbourhood with what Lee described as "make believe subdivisions", detailing Warren Cromartie Secondary School, a fictional school named after Canadian baseball player Warren Cromartie. He and the Montreal Expos are thanked in the album's liner notes. Syme considered the back cover "a little subtle, perhaps over-indulgent". The album was released in September 1982. The album peaked at No. 1 in Canada, No. 3 in the United Kingdom, and No. 10 in the United States. In November 1982, the album was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America for selling one million copies in the United States. Rush released five singles from "Signals". "New World Man" reached No. 21 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 singles chart for three weeks in October and November 1982. It is the band's highest charting single in the US, and the only one to have reached the top 40. At the time of release, "Rolling Stone" criticised the band's choice of "emphasizing synthesizers at the expense of Alex Lifeson's guitar," calling the album "mostly a wasted effort."