Alice Cooper

Warner/Reprise promo posters

Mark Lungo — Sun, 02 Feb 2025 12:55:14 +0000

Contributed by Mark Lungo

Source: www.ebay.com Shattered Music. License: All Rights Reserved.

Blues rocker Bonnie Raitt looks over these Warner/Reprise posters. She made her debut on WB in 1971.

By the mid-1970s, Warner/Reprise (the collective name for Warner Bros. Records, its main subsidiary Reprise, and the labels they distributed, such as Bearsville and Chrysalis) was one of the most successful companies in the music industry. To promote their artists, Warner released a distinctive series of posters to be displayed in American stores. Each poster featured a stark black-and-white photo of one of Warner’s best-selling acts, accompanied by the name of the singer or group in a distinctive, eye-catching font (which is the focus of the article), and the logo of the particular label they were signed to. We’re assuming the posters date from around 1973, since that’s when Procol Harum (one of the bands included in the campaign) made their first release on US Chrysalis, the Grand Hotel album.

The font used throughout the series is an extrabold Helvetica variant with so-called “biform” or “unicase” glyphs for the letters e a m n u: these have the lowercase form, but are just as tall as the uppercase letters. It’s unclear if a typeface with such features was readily available, or whether the posters use a custom creation based on Helvetica Black, with its lowercase letters scaled up to match the capital height.

The image below shows two words from the posters compared to a resetting with glyphs from Fette Helvetica (Helvetica Black) as cast in metal by the Stempel foundry in Germany. In order to approximate the poster type, the letters a e m and n were scaled up, and all letters were made a tad narrower. It’s not a perfect match, but if the letterforms started out with Helvetica – and many characteristic details, from the height of the terminals in e and s to the tail in a, suggest as much – then it obviously wasn’t the foundry version, but some malleable phototype adaptation thereof.

The designer of these posters is unknown. While it’s possible that Warner hired an outside advertising agency for this campaign, the posters may have been designed in-house, too: Warner had its own art and marketing department, known as Creative Services, whose personnel included such first-rate talents as Stan Cornyn and Ed Thrasher, both Grammy winners.

This article compiles all the known posters in the series as of publication. However, it's likely that there are more of these posters out there, since several popular Warner/Reprise acts of the era are unrepresented. If you have a pic of another poster from this campaign, or know anything about their creation, please contact us.

Comparison by Florian Hardwig, using a scan by Letterform Archive. License: CC BY-NC-SA.

Details from the poster typography (left) compared to glyphs from the foundry version of Fette Helvetica, scaled to match (right)

Alice Cooper’s first album on Warner Bros. Records dates from 1971. The poster is tied to his 1973 album Billion Dollar Babies by some sources.

Captain Beefheart’s first release on Reprise came out in 1970.

English rock band Faces signed to Warner Bros. Records in 1970.

English blues rock band Foghat released on Bearsville starting in 1972.

Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot was releasing with Reprise since 1970.

American singer-songwriter James Taylor’s first release with Warner Bros. Records dates from 1971.

In the US, British rock group Jethro Tull switched from Reprise to Chrysalis in 1972.

All of Canadian-American singer-songwriter Neil Young’s early releases were on Reprise, starting in 1969.

English rock band Procol Harum made their first release on US Chrysalis in 1973.

The Doobie Bros. from California released their debut album with Warner Bros. Records in 1971.

This post was originally published at Fonts In Use

Alice Cooper – “Halo of Flies” / “Under My Wheels” single cover

Johannes Vandenheuvel — Sat, 15 Jun 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Contributed by Johannes Vandenheuvel

Source: www.alicecooperechive.com Alice Cooper eChive. License: All Rights Reserved.

From Wikipedia:

“Halo of Flies” is a 1973 single by rock band Alice Cooper taken from their 1971 album Killer. The single was only released in the Netherlands, two years after the song appeared on the album. […] Upon its 1973 single release, the song became a top 10 hit in the Netherlands and also charted in neighboring Belgium because of imports. The single release featured the B-side “Under My Wheels”, also a song of the Killer album, which had already been released as a single two years prior.

The song titles are shown in Bottleneck, in all caps and all lowercase letters, respectively. “Alice Cooper”, “special release for holland”, and the photo credit for Ashley Pandel use Cooper Black. The narrow sans is Monotype Grotesque Extra Condensed. It’s paired with Britannic for the “DJ’s choice” seal.

[More info on Discogs]

Source: todocoleccion.net Korb. License: All Rights Reserved.

This post was originally published at Fonts In Use

Série Chouchou single covers

Florian Hardwig — Tue, 25 Jul 2023 20:36:00 +0000

Contributed by Florian Hardwig

#1, Percy Sledge – “When A Man Loves A Woman” / “Love Me Tender”

Série Chouchou is the name of a French series of 7″ records with songs by artists from Warner, Reprise, Elektra, Atlantic, and Chrysalis, distributed by WEA. Between 1973 and 1975, a total of thirty records were released, with musical styles ranging from soul (Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding) and rock ’n’ roll (Fats Domino) to hard rock (Iron Butterfly, Alice Cooper).

Graphicolor in Nanterre printed each sleeve in two colors, with some releases being made available in alternative color variants. The artist/band name is always set in all caps, and the song titles (mostly) in all lowercase characters.

The typeface may look familiar, and yet this is the first time we feature it on Fonts In Use. Its name is Roc. Designer Albert Boton drew it for French phototype company Hollenstein. I don’t know when exactly Roc was made. The earliest showing I’m aware of is as Hollenstein Roc in a Photo-Lettering brochure from 1964. In 1963, British dry transfer manufacturer Letraset released Compacta. It seems likely that the folks at Hollenstein saw Compacta and asked Boton to come up something similar for phototypesetting. But maybe it’s the other way around and Roc came first?

In any case, such a tight-setting bold condensed sans was very much in vogue at the time: Schmalfette Grotesk started to become popular in the late 1950s, and other manufacturers responded to the trend: Haas and Weber revamped their old designs as Inserat-Grotesk and Neue Aurora VIII, respectively. Ludwig & Mayer issued Permanent Headline in 1964, Stephenson Blake brought out Impact in 1965, and Mergenthaler Linotype followed up with Helvetica Compressed in 1966.

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

Roc (top; here Photoscript’s version named “Ascona Grotesk (Roc)” from a 1965 catalog, scan courtesy of Stephen Coles, CC BY-NC-SA) compared to Compacta (bottom; here Bitstream’s digitization with decreased tracking)

Roc and Compacta are similar, but there are also a couple of differences, see for example the modulation in A M N V W. The construction of several of Roc’s glyphs like a g y G Q is closer to that of Univers (1957/1958). No surprise: Boton started his career at Deberny & Peignot, working under Frutiger.

Roc wasn’t kept exclusive to Hollenstein in Paris. In addition to Photo-Lettering in New York, it was also carried by Photoscript in London, where it went under the name Ascona Grotesk (Roc). By 1974, Hollenstein had the design extended to six styles; maigre (caps only), normal, italique, noir, noir italique, and noir coupé (stencil). It did fairly well for a while, but due to its limited availability, the design fell into oblivion and became overshadowed by Compacta. To my knowledge, Roc was never digitized.

The Série Chouchou logo features caps from Normande, set on a circle. The number is in Helvetica Bold for the first few releases, changing to the more compact Helvetica Inserat (or Helvetica schmalfett?) for two-digit numbers.

[More info on Discogs]

Posted as part of a series that pays tribute to Albert Boton, one of the preeminent French type designers of the past sixty years. Albert Boton died on July 20, 2023, at the age of 91.

#2, Jethro Tull – “Bourée” / “Locomotive Breath”

#3, Sonny & Cher – “I Got You Babe” / “The Beat Goes On”

#4, Delaney & Bonnie – “Miss Ann” / “Free the People”

#4, back cover

#5, Wilson Pickett – “In The Midnight Hour” / “Land Of 1000 Dances”

#6, Otis Redding – “Satisfaction” / “Respect”

#7, Ray Charles – “What I’d Say” / “Hallelujah, I Love Her So”

#8, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – “Woodstock” / “Carry On”

#9, Aretha Franklin – “Respect” / “I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)”. The wide light sans is Univers 33, see also #19.

#10, Vanilla Fudge – “You Keep Me Hanging’ [sic!] On, Part 1 / Part 2”

#11, Iron Butterfly – “In A Gadda Da Vida” / “[In] Iron Butterfly Theme”

#12, Graham Nash – “Chicago” / “Military Madness”

#13, Bread – “Baby I’m A Want You” / “The Guitar Man”

#14, The Doors – “Light My Fire” / “Hello, I Love You”

#15, Norman Greenbaum – “Spirit In The Sky” / “Canned Ham”

#16, Routers – “Let’s Go” / “Mashy”. The second song name is added in Helvetica Bold.

#17, Alice Cooper – “School’s Out” / “Elected”

#19, Peter, Paul & Mary – “Blowing In The Wind” / “If I Had A Hammer (The Hammer Song)”. The wide light sans is Univers 33, se also #9.

#18, The Everly Brothers – “Cathy’s Clown” / “Lucille”

#20, Myriam Makeba – “Pata Pata” / “Malayisha”

#21, Otis Redding – “(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay” / “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long”

#22, Fats Domino – “Lady Madonna” / “I’m Ready”

#23, The Bar-Kays – “Soul Finger” / “Knucklehead”

#24, Sam & Dave – “Hold On, I’m Coming” / “Soul Man”

#25, Ben E. King – “Stand By Me” / “Spanish Harlem”

#26, Booker T & The MG’s – “Green Onions” / “Get Ready”

#27, Arthur Conley – “Sweet Soul Music” / “Funky Street”

#28, Percy Sledge – “Warm And Tender Love” / “My Special Prayer”

#29, King Curtis – “Memphis Soul Stew” / “Teasin’”

#30, Wilson Pickett – “Funky Broadway” / “Mustang Sally”

This post was originally published at Fonts In Use

Pelo magazine logo and covers (1970–2001)

Felix Nic — Wed, 17 Jun 2020 15:13:29 +0000

Contributed by Felix Nic