David Larkham at Fonts In Use

Elton John – Elton John album art, “Your Song” single cover

Sun, 11 Apr 2021 16:16:00 +0000

Photo(s) by Bart Solenthaler on Flickr.

Source: www.flickr.com Uploaded to Flickr by Bart Solenthaler and tagged with “thalia”. License: All Rights Reserved.

Thalia for the self-titled second studio album by Elton John, first released on 10 April 1970 by DJM Records in the UK. Originally released in the United States in 1970 on UNI Records, the shown pressing – with unchanged artwork – is from 1973 when that label was replaced by MCA Records.

Design by Jim Goff, with art direction from David Larkham and photography by Stowell Stanford.

A few years later, Thalia was used for the debut release by Canadian band Rush.

[More info on Discogs]

The German sleeve of “Your Song” – the album’s opening track and Elton John’s breakthrough single – with B-side “Take Me To The Pilot” uses a detail from Stanford’s portrait photograph. Thalia is here paired with Kabel for the titles. The record was released by Hansa Records, 1970.

This post was originally published at Fonts In Use

Rod Stewart – Tonight I’m Yours album art

Fonts In Use Staff — Sun, 06 Sep 2020 12:46:21 +0000

Contributed by Fonts In Use Staff

Source: www.flickr.com Uploaded to Flickr by Michael Studt and tagged with “chevalier”. License: All Rights Reserved.

Chevalier is the typeface used for Tonight I’m Yours. Eleven years after his debut album, this was Rod Stewart’s thirteenth solo record. The album contained a hit single by the same name [Discogs], and was released on the Latin American market with translated song titles as Esta Noche Soy Tuyo. The cover was designed under art direction of Richard Seireeni. The single record credits David Larkham for the sleeve design. The portrait of Rod Stewart, looking into a setting sun with pursed lips, is by photographer Raul Vega.

Chevalier was probably released shortly before. It’s shown in the 1980 VGC Typositor catalog as a VGC original. The designer is unknown. (If you have info on that, please let us know!) There are numerous digitizations under various names, see the typeface page for details.

[More info on Discogs]

Single record cover by Riva, UK.

Single record back cover, with smaller print in Times New Roman and Futura.

Single record cover by Warner Bros., USA, with a different photo, but again ft. Chevalier (plus Helvetica).

For the Spanish-langage version titled Esta Noche Soy Tuo, Chevalier was replaced with the similar Solemnis, set with faux small caps.

This post was originally published at Fonts In Use

Elton John – Tumbleweed Connection album art

Riccardo Sartori — Wed, 08 Apr 2020 19:03:47 +0000

Contributed by Riccardo Sartori

Front cover.

Tumbleweed Connection is the third studio album by Elton John, released in October 1970 in the United Kingdom by DJM and January 1971 in the United States by UNI. It is a concept album based on country and western/Americana themes. The sleeve design is by David Larkham, Elton John’s long-time art director.

The title is set in all-caps Plymouth, alternating the weathered and non-weathered variants of the letters. The gatefold cover comes with an illustrated twelve–page booklet with lyrics and extended credits, set in tightly spaced Poor Richard. A selection of pages is shown below. See more images on 45worlds.

Track list.

Song credits.

Lyrics for “Ballad of a Well-known Gun” and “Son of Your Father”.

Lyrics for “Burn Down the Mission”.

Personnel portraits.

From Wikipedia:

The wraparound cover photo for the album was taken at Horsted Keynes railway station, approximately 30 miles south of London on the Bluebell Railway in the county of Sussex. Photographer Ian Digby Ovens captured John (seated to the right in the photo but appearing to the left on the front cover, shown above) and [song-writer Bernie] Taupin (standing to the left, on the back cover) in front of the late-nineteenth-century station to represent the album's rural Americana concept, despite the English location.

Back cover.

[More info on Discogs]

This post was originally published at Fonts In Use