Alex Steinweiss: Creator of the Modern Album Cover book

Spotted this book a while ago although it was in deluxe packaging on the US version of Amazon with a price tag featuring hundreds of dollars. 477.75 of them, to be exact. (Although it was discounted from $700.)

Next month a new version arrives in the UK with an pre-order figure of £38.24 - which is far more viable were I to treat myself.

There's a link to that version here:
Alex Steinweiss, the Inventor of the Modern Album Cover


"This title presents music for the eyes. The man who launched the Golden Age of album cover design. Alex Steinweiss invented the album cover as we know it, and created a new graphic art form. In 1940, as Columbia Records' young new art director, he pitched an idea: Why not replace the standard plain brown wrapper with an eye-catching illustration? The company took a chance, and within months its record sales increased by over 800 per cent. His covers for Columbia - combining bold typography with modern, elegant illustrations - took the industry by storm and revolutionized the way records were sold.

Over three decades, Steinweiss made thousands of original artworks for classical, jazz, and popular record covers for Columbia, Decca, London, and Everest; as well as logos, labels, advertising material, even his own typeface, the Steinweiss Scrawl. He launched the golden age of album cover design and influenced generations of designers to follow. Less well known - but included here - are his posters for the U.S. Navy; packaging and label design for liquor companies; film title sequences; as well as his fine art.

This title includes essays by three-time Grammy Award-winning art director/designer Kevin Reagan and graphic design historian Steven Heller; Steinweiss' personal recollections from an epic career; and extensive ephemera from the Steinweiss archive. Record collectors and graphic designers rejoice! Previously available in a limited edition, the book is finally available in an affordable trade version."


Some more info from Burning Settlers Cabin:

There was a time in the 1970s and 80s when record album designers were gods. If you saw one on the street you bowed down immediately and kissed his or her hand. They had the power to decide what was cool, and what was not. They could ignore budgets and demand the sleeve be wrapped in rubber. I had one teacher who would come to class and start with, “Sorry I was late. I was having lunch with Mick.” He didn’t mean Mick Hodgson at Ph.D. It wasn’t that way from the beginning. It started with Alex Steinweiss. Steven Heller, Kevin Reagan, and Steinweiss have written a new book, Alex Steinweiss: Creator of the Modern Album Cover

Working at Columbia Records in the 1940s he changed the industry. He replaced the previously generic stamped covers with remarkable 12×12 posters. These album covers reference European modernism, A.M. Cassandre, and Salavdor Dali in form. They succeed in combining this high art aesthetic with wit and levity. Without knowing who made it, one of my biggest influences in high school was his cover for Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2. I’m pretty sure I somehow transposed the Russian landscape here into a poster for the school musical, Oklahoma.

MA Thesis

Got it bound. Finally.

Concave Scream artwork

From: Junk
Date: 22/05/09

Singapore's much-adored band Concave Scream recently released their fifth album Soundtrack for a Book, and have literally taken packaging to a whole new level by attaching the CD to a second hand book.

The nine-track, 43-minute release is entirely instrumental, and all 1,000 copies will come in specially selected second hand books, including dusty old ones from Enid Blyton, with the CD secured somewhere within the book with a bolt and nut.

The album is priced at S$20, and is currently available through online orders via www.concavescream.com (where you can customise your own virtual book), or physically via The Esplanade Store or at 2 Leng Kee Road, #03-02 Thye Hong Ctr, Singapore 159086 (near RedHill MRT). The band are gearing up for an album launch on 18 September at The Esplanade. For more updates and info, visit www.concavescreamband.blogspot.com.

Sketchbooks

I completed a previous music-oriented project by churning out the development work as 12" x 12" prints before binding and slotting into a record sleeve. Today I revisited the idea to create a couple of sketchbooks for this project - albeit while taking inspiration for the book I used as part of the last MA project. There I collected pages from old books while here I've cut up a selection of second-hand record sleeves. I also drilled a hole through the midle so that it emulated the vinyl format but I actually like how this adds continuity should you flick through. Now I just need to fill the things with ideas: i.e. the hard bit.

Tal Brosh - Less Is Less/Less Isn't More

Amy reminded me about Tal Brosh's work and, in particular, forwarded me a link to Less Is Less and Less Isn't More: projects that explored design concepts based around developments in music distribution. I think Brosh's stance was that the download was a potential threat to both visual music accompaniment and traditional listening practices. This was highlighted throughout a broad range of work.

More work at http://www.talbrosh.com/

From Less Is Less:

"Although to begin with the album was almost an arbitrary model, its journey as the carrier of music over the past 60 years has shaped our consciousness as a social and cultural object. 'Less Is ' is a large-scale book that illustrates different aspects of the album decline in the digital age, using engaging visuals to create a certain rhythm and playful narrative."

From Less Isn't More:

"The nature of digital music and ‘per song’ marketing has resulted in a dramatic transformation of the single market in the past six years.
In the information age unlimited availability makes consumers more likely to get fastidious but what does this ‘cherry picking’ do to the music and the way we precieve it? This book offers a visual represetation to the way we listen to music these days."

There's also a further Tal Brosh project that is an experimental music packaging project that takes a concept in some really interesting directions. While I'm looking at the subject from a different standpoint, the more destructive methods used are especially interesting to me right now.

Barnbrook Mixtape 1988

From Jonathan Barnbook's blog:

"If you are of a certain age you will remember ‘the mixtape’ – a cassette tape you made with a personal selection of music. These amateur DJ efforts were for many purposes, sometimes to get a party going were you arrived at a very sober occasion and proclaimed you could liven up the place with the magic ingredient of ‘the best party mixtape ever (usually starting with James Brown's ‘Sex machine’ and following with a selection that wouldn't have been out of place at a bad wedding reception). Some mixtapes were to woo girls clearly showing ‘what a sensitive caring guy you were’; and you hoped that subliminally recording ‘please sleep with me’ in a whisper in the quiet bits of the tracks would guarantee you some kind of success with them. The final category were much more dark in intent; part of a wider evangelical mission you had to convert the whole world to the music and sub-culture you were almost religiously part of.

So, recently Richard Squires, an old college friend contacted Jonathan with some rather professional images of an example in the third category (thankfully), that Jonathan did for him when they were both at St.Martins in 1988. We don't think it is the most amazing piece of design he has done but they do serve to show the intensity of Jonathan as a student – that he was prepared to go to such design lengths to simply give a friend some music he liked, especially since he has has cited record covers as one of his biggest influenced on him becoming a graphic designer. Also on seeing this we are lamenting something human that has been lost in the iTunes playlist or Spotify link."

The Small Stakes: Music Posters by Jason Munn

When this project changed direction, one of the first things I did was treat myself to the recent book that gathered together Jason Munn's music posters. Operating under the name 'The Small Stakes', Wisconsin's Munn has been producing beautiful screen prints that mainly promote gigs. However, this supposedly temporary use hasn't stopped them becoming collectable. Anyway, the book arrived today and it is lovely. Especially the metallics.