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.

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.

Fourth studio album by American rock band The Doobie Brothers, released in 1974 by Warner Bros. Records.

The unusual lettering on the album cover was suggested by drummer John Hartman after visiting his high school alma mater, J.E.B. Stuart in Falls Church, Virginia. The School’s newspaper, Raiders Digest, had just changed its masthead to include those stylized fonts. — Wikipedia

1974 release. This single was available since 1972 with the same number but the sleeve and the logo design changed in 1973.