Close-up of Elektra’s 1966 logo, taken from the 1980 label design

William S. Harvey designed Elektra’s most recognizable logo in 1966. The label used this branding for 17 years before it adopted an overhauled identity (designed by Milton Glaser, type designer and master warlock of the graphic arts) in 1983. Reworked variations of this iconic design were later used by the label after it was relaunched by Warner Music Group in 2009.

The logo consists of an uppercase E (based on outlined Bingo, a decorative stencil designed by John Albert Cavanagh for his 1946 book Lettering and adopted by Photo-Lettering) directly above the word “elektra” (set in Phanitalian, a heavily flared decorative sans originating in the catalog of Vanderburgh Wells & Company and offered in the 1960s by Headliners in its Morgan Press collection).

Label for The Doors’ 1969 album The Soft Parade. This label design, as well as the logo, was first used in March of 1966 on Phil Ochs’ In Concert live album.

Catalog number and disc side indicator, “STEREO,” and album title set in Railroad Gothic (ATF; 1906) [edit: or rather Gothic No. 13 (Linotype), see comments]. Track list and credits set in Vogue (bold; Intertype; 1930-1946). Band logo is a custom-made sort.

Label for Clear Light’s 1967 self-titled album (circa 1970–1973 reissue). This label design, which features a butterfly carrying the E by its stem (alongside a 7″ design featuring a caterpillar), was first used in August of 1970 on Josh White's The Best of… album.

Band name set in Franklin Gothic (ATF; 1904–1913). Disc side indicator, catalog number and “STEREO” set in Erbar-Grotesk Condensed (Ludwig & Mayer; 1929). Track list and credits set in Spartan (ATF/Linotype; 1939), a copy of Futura, here with its distinctive two-story a. Address info is set in Trade Gothic Extended (regular; Linotype; 1959).

Label for Gamma’s 1979 self-titled Gamma 1 album. This label design, which is similar to the 1969–1970 design (only used on two LPs) but with a smaller logo, was first used in 1979 on Nino Rota’s soundtrack album for the film Hurricane.

Disc side indicator, catalog number, “STEREO” and band/album name set in Futura (bold; Bauer; 1927). Track list and credits also set in Futura (regular). Address info set in ITC Avant Garde Gothic (regular; ITC; 1970).

This album with music composed by Johann Sebastian Bach and performed by German lutenist Walter Gerwig was released on Nonesuch Records in 1966. The cover design is by William S. Harvey, with art by Donald Leake.

Phanitalian Ornamented No 2 was first shown by wood type manufacturer William Hamilton Page in 1879, more than a century after Bach had lived. Still, Harvey deemed the Tuscan with its bulbous terminals baroque enough to be used for the composer’s name. Its mid-stem decoration was a tad too much, though: the designer simplified the letterforms by cutting away the lateral knobs. The only letters to keep their decoration are those where the “rivet heads” connect to a structural element on the other side of the stem, see B E H. In the process, Harvey also made the letters a little wider.

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Detail of Phanitalian Ornamented No 2, widened and minus the mid-stem ornamentation. Compare to the unmodified letterforms in Solotype’s phototype version, Bohemia.

French edition of the single from The Stooges’ second album, Fun House, from 1970. Tom Copi’s cover photo captures the crucial moment Iggy Pop left the stage and walked on a sea of hands, while smearing himself with peanut butter. The combination of Contest (Mecanorma’s copy of Davison Psyche) and Charleston for the song titles is quintessential for the era, while the band name is a logo created by Elektra records art director William S. Harvey, as he had done for labelmates The Doors, Love, MC5 and others. It appears to be derived from Kabel Black.

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A Child’s Garden of Grass started out as a handbook written by Jack S. Margolis and Richard Clorfene, first published by Contact Books in 1969. In 1971, it was adapted into A Child’s Garden of Grass (A Pre-Legalization Comedy), a long-playing record produced and directed by Ron Jacobs, along with Margolis.

Dave Davison’s Fandango is used for the title both on the album cover and on the paperback reissue of the handbook by Pocket Books, as well as for the promotional campaign. Fandango is similar to Davison Bolero, with noticeable differences – such as Fandango having additional ornaments in certain glyphs or double notches in letters such as O and D. Both Fandango and Bolero are modelled after Central’s Othello.

The album was art directed “in a joint effort” by Robert L. Heimall and William S. Harvey. John Balsley styled the photo. It features all kinds of topical items from marijuana plants, a hookah, tobacco crumbs, papers, and matchboxes to a Lady Justice scale, a package of Stoned Wheat Thins, pinback buttons, headphones, a can of air freshener with green leaves, and a Monopoly board.

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There are some words at the top left of the back cover that use Smoke (“GRASS”), Flirt (“MARIJUANA”) and Karnac (“CANNABIS SATIVA”). Track list and credits are set in sober Helvetica.

Cover of the handbook as reissued by Pocket Books. The secondary typeface is (a phototype version of) Page No. 506.

Promotional poster by Elektra Records

A billboard on Sunset Strip, advertising the release of the album in 1971. Coincidentally, the Music Hall sign below uses a stylistically related typeface, Rubens.

Front and back of the gatefold LP

Two typefaces from Photo-Lettering’s library in chromatic use: the open and shaded E style of Dave Davison’s Carousel with blue top and brown bottom halves and slightly widened proportions, and Stars and Stripes – a patriotic offshoot of PLINC Madison – in red and blue, set on a circle.

Illustrator Edward Sorel’s rendition of the Great Seal of the United States depicts comedian David Frye as the (not so bald) American eagle having a tight grip on the targets of his impersonations, including Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, William F. Buckley, Hubert Humphrey, and Nelson Rockefeller.

The motto E pluribus unum is replaced by “And make no mistake about that”. The obituary for Frye published by The Record/Herald News in 2011 comments on the context of this line:

[…] his most memorable character by far was Nixon, whom Mr. Frye portrayed as a tortured soul with darting eyes, flaring brows, scowling lips and deep-seated insecurities. The longer the president stayed in office, the deeper Mr. Frye's impressions drilled into Nixon’s psyche.

“My administration has taken crime out of the streets,” Mr. Frye’s Nixon said in one Watergate-era routine, “and put it in the White House, where I can keep an eye on it.”

Mr. Frye perfected his impression by matching Nixon’s vocal tones and modulations, by adopting a few of the president’s catch phrases, such as “Let me make this perfectly clear,” and by creating a few of his own, including “I am the president, and make no mistake about that.” He practiced in front of a mirror every day.

Whether he intended it, Mr. Frye transformed nightclub mimicry into sharp-edged political satire that drew a national following. The mere title of his best-selling 1969 comedy album “I Am the President” managed to make Nixon sound both pompous and weak-kneed.

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East-West is the second album by blues rock band the Butterfield Blues Band, released in 1966 on the Elektra label. Designed by William S. Harvey, the album uses Tip-Top for the band name and (back)slanted Frankonia caps for the title.

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On the back, Paul Nelson’s liner notes, the names of the band members, and the track list are set in various styles from the Trade Gothic family.

Front cover.

After the demise of the Yardbirds, half of the final lineup—Keith Relf (vocals) and Jim McCarty (drums)—founded the proto-prog group Renaissance. The first album was released in the US by Elektra records, who elected to redesign the cover. The original UK cover featured a rendering of the band name in a distorted sans serif over a painting, The Downfall of Icarus by Genisson. The rest of Europe received this cover from Island Records, with sleeve design credit going to Jack Levy.

In the US and other territories where the album was released by Elektra (US, Canada, Japan, Peru), fans received packaging with art direction credit going to Elektra’s William S. Harvey, with credit for design going to Robert L. Heimall. The front cover illustration is by Peter Schaumann and the back cover features an illustration by Paul Whitehead.

On this version, the band name is rendered in near inch-high type in the style of Carlyle Roccoco. Featured in Photo-Lettering’s Alphabet Thesaurus Vol. 3 (1971), alongside Carlyle Quaint, which has been digitized by House Industries.

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Inner sleeve.

Back cover with track listing and credits in Memphis.

Back cover of a different pressing, with small text set in an italic Caslon or similar,.

Charles-Marie Widor’s Organ Symphony No. 5 In F Minor Op. 42, No. 1. Richard Elsasser at the organ of the Hammond Museum in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

Perhaps the most impressive part of the house is the Great Hall, with its 8200 pipe, eight story high, pipe organ and giant stained glass window. — Atlas Obscura

The cover of this Nonesuch recording was art directed by William S. Harvey, with art by Roger Hane. For the artists’ names, Harvey combined caps from an Art Nouveau face that was carried by Photo-Lettering, Inc. as Staudel Xenotype P. It is paired with Copperplate Gothic and Trade Gothic Bold Extended or similar.

Front cover.

A Nonesuch Christmas from the Baroque, Renaissance, and Middle Ages was released in 1970. Cover design by Bob Heimall, with art by Abe Gurvin and art direction by Bill Harvey.

The title typeface is a rare bird: West Latin Playbill Swash was drawn in two weights in or before 1967 by Dave West for Photo-Lettering, Inc. The bold weight used here appears to be derived from his West Cooper Nouveau Swash Swash 10, but is distinguished by flared stems and pointed terminals.

Nonesuch was “created in 1963 as a budget label for classical releases licensed from large classical record companies in Britain and France that did not have a cost-efficient means to distribute their releases directly in North America.” [Discogs]

“Merry Xmas And Happy New Year” – when LTypI is the moniker for picking a typeface because its name matches the content, what shall we call it when a typeface was chosen because of the specimen text? (It doesn’t add up here. The record was released prior to this specimen.) West Latin Playbill Swash in PLINC’s One Line Manual of Styles (1971). The line below shows the similar and more popular West Cooper Nouveau Swash 10, with a lower catalog number, suggesting a (slightly) earlier date.

Back cover.

Inner sleeve with track listing and liner notes by Joshua Rifkin, set in justified Helvetica.

Cover concept and art direction by William S. Harvey, with photography by Joel Brodsky. The type is West Behemoth Italic Swash. Something about the cover design was not quite right, it seems. Maybe the image of the broken mirror was too sinister? Maybe the type was too small? In any case, one year later, Elektra re-issued the album under a new name, The Road To Cairo, with a new cover by Elaine Gongora.

The sleeve for the French single release of the opening song, “The Road To Cairo”, features the same typeface for the artist’s name. The title appears to be in outlined caps from Grotesque No.9.

The Smoke Dreams is the debut album by Fred Engelberg, released in 1963 with Crestview Records. This record label was founded in the same year, as a subsidiary of Elektra. The cover was designed by William S. Harvey, Elektra’s influential art director who held this position from 1953 to 1973. He combined Barry Feinstein’s smoke photography with right-aligned Bulletin Typewriter, all in lowercase.

Engelberg’s ellipsis-heavy liner notes on the back are arranged in a wavy column of smoke, set in Memphis. The track list on the label shows W.A. Dwiggins’ Metro, while the Crestview wordmark is in a style known as French Antique Extended or Clarendon Extended.

Art direction by William S. Harvey, with cover art by Gene Szafran.

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