Front cover of the soundtrack album

Alexander of the Herb Lubalin Study Center showed a mostly typographic and entirely black-and-white “Style B” poster made for The Harder They Come. He points out that other promotional posters for the film were done in the blaxploitation style. This post is about the most striking design among those.

The soundtrack album to the Jamaican cult film was released in the United Kingdom in July 1972 by Island Records. A North American release followed in February 1973 on Mango Records. The sleeve design is credited to London-based CCS Associates, with cover art by John Bryant.

The title is rendered in Bottleneck. Tony Wenman’s design for Letraset was brand new at the time: it was issued earlier in 1972, likely inspired by the success of Seymour Chwast’s Art Tone, and most closely following its Boot Black style. The bottom-heavy letterforms were drawn by hand, arranged on an arch, contoured, extruded, and filled with color gradients. Jimmy Cliff’s name got a similarly colorful treatment, with shaded letterforms loosely based on Cooper Black Italic: the initial J obtained a large descending hook, C was streamlined, and the f’s elongated.

This artwork was also used for a poster issued by Island Records to promote the album, and later got adopted for posters made for various re-releases of the film.

[More info on Discogs]

Promotional poster for the soundtrack by Island Records, UK, 1973. The elements of Bryant’s artwork were rearranged for the taller format.

British Quad (30″×40″) poster for a 1977 re-release of the “original uncut version” by Lagoon Associates. Again, the elements of Bryant’s artwork were rearranged, now optimized for the landscape format. Additional text is set in all-caps Franklin Gothic.

German poster (24.25″×16.5″) for a 1980 re-release by Melody & Art Films, featuring a coarser copy of the original art, with a simpler color scheme – which extends to the lettering. The text added at the bottom uses the upright style of Cooper Black, apparently applied as rub-down type.

Back cover of the soundtrack album (Mango Records, 1973). Most text is produced on a typewriter, making use of double spacing and several ellipses to justify the last paragraph. “Original Soundtrack Recording” is in unmodified Bottleneck. Credits are set in Univers Condensed and Helvetica.

Front and back cover of the gatefold

Inner gatefold with a collage of photos and lyrics.

Justin Hinds (1942–2005) and his backing vocal trio The Dominoes recorded myriad single tracks and less than a handful of record albums in the late seventies and eighties. Years before, Hinds had scored the monster hit that would remain his biggest claim to fame: “Carry Go Bring Come”, recorded in 1963 and released by Treasure Isle Records.

On both Jezebel (1976) and Just in Time (1978), either band or someone at Island Records decided to spell the singer’s last name as “Hines” instead of “Hinds”. Both albums featured artwork and design by London based design studio Bloomfield/Travis, pairing a portrait with contoured capitals of Quaint Roman.

Bloomfield/Travis designed the covers for many big names in reggae (like Burning Spear and Steel Pulse) but also worked for numerous post punk bands (like The Slits, for example). I have not been able to find information about how big the studio was, or who had what role, but a blog post on the Kamikazi Dub website reports that the studio worked with Jamaican designer Trevor Campbell, among others.

[More info on Discogs]

On the US/Canadian market, the album was released in a variant with a black background.

UK Edition (1975), with the addition of a portrait of Marcus Garvey.

Marcus Garvey is the third studio album released by Burning Spear. One could also claim it is Burning Spear’s first album, as a solo artist. Until shortly before the recording of this album, Burning Spear was the name of the band, lead by Winston Rodney (Jamaica, 1945), with Rupert Willington and Delroy Hines/Hinds as band members. The three of them are portrayed by Dennis Morris on the back cover of this album and its dub version Garvey’s Ghost, released 1976.

The album cover shows a dramatic illustration of two warriors with earrings and spears. At the bottom of the design, a sturdy chain is interrupted by the album title, set in bold capitals of Roslyn Gothic. Roslyn is the single known typeface by lettering artist and friendly-looking gentleman Harry Winters. This typeface was released by VGC in 1972. The Bold style used on the cover was also available from Letraset. The back cover shows both the Bold and the Medium weight.

The same typeface and design concept are re-used by “Bloomfield / Travis” on Garvey’s Ghost. This time, the portrait of Jamaican political activist Marcus Garvey is the main image, reversed as if evoking his unearthly appearance.

See a post about another album named Marcus Garvey produced by Sonia Pottinger for more information on Marcus Garvey.

More info:
[Marcus Garvey on Discogs]
[Garvey’s Ghost on Discogs]