Front cover

Album cover for Neil Diamond’s Greatest Hits as issued by MCA Records in a special edition for Deutscher Schallplattenclub. Cover designer Fritz Blankenhorn used Embrionic Triline for both the name of the artist and the title of the record, featuring different two–color combinations. Text is set in all caps, with the alternate swashed caps for the initials. Two interesting things are happening here: first, the N with a swash descending over the M in the second line. Second, the use of a swash alternate in the middle of the word “GREATEST”, as well as the joins in the EA pair and the EST “ligature” at the end.

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Back cover

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LP front cover.

Nesthäkchen is a series of children/teenage girl novels written by Else Ury (1877–1943) in the 1910s and 1920s. In 1984, following the success of a TV adaptation for ZDF’s Christmas series, Deutscher Bücherbund published a new edition in three volumes, each with two Nesthäkchen stories, acccompanied by an audio drama version of the first two novels on the subsidiary record label Sonocord.

The covers of the double LP and two audio cassettes were designed by Fritz Blankenhorn, with illustration by Medard Varsányi. The title typeface is Loreley, which was used for the book covers, too.

Loreley is an unconnected monolinear script with slight slope. It’s one of the more than 40 families (with 200+ styles) that Georg Salden (b. 1930) designed for the GST-Kreis. This collaboration with a group of phototypesetting studios was started in 1972. Every month, Salden came up with a new typeface design that was exclusive to the club members. This arrangement allowed Salden to leave his work as commercial artist behind, start working full time on fonts, and make a living as independent type designer. (In 2017, David Jonathan Ross – unknowingly – revived this idea for the digital age, and launched the Font of the Month Club.)

Photo: Florian Hardwig. License: CC BY-NC-SA.

Some of the variants that Loreley and Loretta offered, compiled from samples shown in a 1985 catalog by Stulle, one of the members of the GST-Kreis. Located in Stuttgart, Stulle was probably the typesetting service that Blankenhorn used.

Top: Loretta leicht; Loretta. Middle: Loreley leicht; Loreley with swash alternates. Bottom: Loreley leicht with swash alternates; Loreley Shaded with swash alternates.

The ambitious schedule didn’t allow Salden to come up with completely new and original designs every single month. He was relieved to learn that the members also accepted weight, contour, or shadow variations of existing designs. GST Loreley was drawn in two weights plus outline and shaded styles. The latter is the style used for the Nesthäkchen covers. GST Loretta is a variant with simpler caps. Furthermore, there’s a number of decorative swash alternates that can be used both with Loreley and Loretta, some of which can be seen in this use, too. While several of the Georg Salden Types made between the 1970s and 1990s have since been made available for contemporary use from Salden’s TypeManufactur, Loreley and Loretta are still waiting to be digitized.

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LP back cover.

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The gatefold has an outlined version of the cover illustration, allowing the listeners to color it in themselves – an opportunity that the owner of this copy happily seized (at least for the right half).

Source: www.ebay.de dream-tapes. License: All Rights Reserved.

Vol. 1 of the cassette version, with Nesthäkchen und ihre Puppen.

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Vol. 2 is about Nesthäkchens erstes Schuljahr.

The book covers replace Varsányi’s illustration with photographs. In addition to the descending swash k, this setting also makes use of Loreley’s decorative alternate for h. The secondary text is set in a phototype version of Bembo.

Source: www.booklooker.de Fährfrau. License: All Rights Reserved.

Vol. 1: Nesthäkchen und ihre Puppen / Nesthäkchens erstes Schuljahr.

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Vol. 2: Nesthäkchen im Kinderheim / Nesthäkchens Backfischzeit.

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Vol. 3: Nesthäkchen fliegt aus dem Nest / Nesthäkchen und ihre Küken.

Siegfried in use for the cover of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 in E-flat major, also known as the “Symphony of a Thousand”, as recorded by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Georg Solti.

Mahler composed the symphony in 1906. It was first performed by the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra in 1910. The chosen typeface dates from the same period, and also comes from the same place: Siegfried was designed by Munich-based artist August Glaser and was first cast in 1902. Seven decades later, the odd hybrid was back in fashion as part of the rediscovery of Art Nouveau.

Originally released by Decca, this double LP is a special edition distributed in Germany in cooperation with Deutscher Schallplattenclub. The cover was designed by Fritz Blankenhorn (1921–2011), with the smaller text set in two weights from Gill Sans.