(Coincidentally my first job after graduating Cooper Union was as Ed Benguiat's assistant at Photo-Lettering!). The subject of creating a 'scrawl' font was also discussed, but was nixed for the same reason-in addition there wouldn't have been enough time to do it: creating a font from scratch can be a very time-consuming process.Īround 1951 Alex Steinweiss had actually created a font called 'Steinweiss Scrawl' for Photo-Lettering.

While I was working on this, Josh and I had discussed the possibility of doing similar lettering for all the different chapter headings and headlines throughout the book (about 16 of them), but decided that it wasn't practical for budgetary reasons. So it was a bit of a challenge to try to capture that spontaneity in my piece of digital art for Taschen's cover-as seen below: Steinweiss' calligraphic work was very spontaneous and kinetic, while the work of lettering artists tends to be more carefully studied and worked out. Here's an example of one of his album covers: This 'scrawl' had become ubiquitous and inextricably associated with his work. Steinweiss' very graphic calligraphy, which had become known as 'The Steinweiss Scrawl'. My assignment was to do some lettering for the cover and title page that was in the spirit of Mr. Of course I was thrilled to have anything to do with this project. He produced hundreds of covers for 78 RPM albums between the late 1930s and the late 1940s. Steinweiss is considered to be the inventor of the album cover as we have come to know it-as a kind of mini-poster with graphics relating to the musical content of the album. For those of you who are not familiar with that name, Mr.

Bibliotheca Universalis brings together nearly 100 of our all-time favorite titles in a neat new format so you can curate your own affordable library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia.Back in the summer of 2009 I was contacted by Josh Baker at Taschen Publishing about doing some work on the huge commemorative edition they were putting together on the work of Alex Steinweiss. The book includes Steinweiss’s personal recollections and ephemera from an epic career, as well as insightful essays by three-time Grammy Award–winning art director/designer Kevin Reagan and graphic design historian Steven Heller.īibliotheca Universalis- Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe at an unbeatable, democratic price! Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, the name TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible, open-minded publishing. His daring designs, gathered here in all their bright combinations of bold typography with modern, elegant illustration, revolutionized the way music was sold. Over the next 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. 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 percent. I wanted people to look at the artwork and hear the music.” ―Alex SteinweissĪlex Steinweiss (1917–2011) invented the album cover as we know it. “I love music so much and I had such ambition that I was willing to go way beyond what the hell they paid me for.

Steinweiss scrawl