The Art of the Spanish Guitar is an album by Julian Bream, released in 1970 on the RCA Red Seal label. It contains interpretations of compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach, Maurice Ravel, Benjamin Britten and others.

[More Info at Discogs]

Arhoolie Records released this blues compilation in 1972, with songs by Roosevelt Holts and his friends, namely Boogie Bill Webb, Eli Owens, Blind Pete Burrell, and Esau Weary. Of the eleven tracks, all but one were recorded August 1970, in Bogalusa, Clifton, and New Orleans.

The cover design is by Wayne Pope, with photography and liner notes by David Evans. The top-heavy typeface he picked for the title is Secession, which originated around 1900 at the Scholz foundry in Vienna. This provenience shines through in the capital H – it uses the enlarged lowercase form with top bar as found in blackletter typefaces.

[More info on Discogs]

Métropolitaines in use for 2 Bugs and a Roach, an album with Chicago blues and Jump blues by Earl Hooker (1930–1970), recorded at Chicago’s Sound Studios in November 1968 and released the following year on Arhoolie Records. According to Wikipedia, Jimmy Page wanted a Gibson EDS-1275, after seeing the sleeve with Hooker on his double neck electric guitar.

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Album cover designed by Brest Brest Brest / Rémy Poncet with the Latin part of the Japanese font MS Mincho for the acoustic tribute album to Jimi Hendrix’ “May This Be Love” by French guitarist Thomas Naïm, released in 2025.

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Re-edition of the Cahier d'Atelier. La Construction d’une gitare classique (“Workshop notebook. The construction of a classical guitar) by Robert Bouchet, published in October 2023 by Éditions de la Philharmonie, in their Musée de la musique collection.

Visual identity for What is Music? (WIM), an international music and arts gathering held in the medieval city of Frías, Burgos, over ten summer days. Following the success of past years, the ninth edition will take place from July 18 to 26, 2025.

From the festival’s Instagram (translated):

What is music?

A question that seems simple, but whose answer is infinite. It is also the essence of our encounter: something seemingly simple that encompasses a great complexity.
Following that idea, we break down the WIM into its most essential elements: instruments, nature, outdoors, people, connection, emotion and of course, cold.

From them, these simple figures were born that, however, contain the chaotic, the deep and the indescribable of music.

Although we weren't always clear about the direction when drawing them, we knew that everything was interconnected. WIM is what it is because each of these elements composes it and, at the same time, in each dwell the others. Therefore, we try to represent them integrated, as in an infinite matrioska where the smallest piece is sometimes the largest, and vice versa.

For this common language, which is felt in the nervous system and is not counted in words.

Design by Clara Briones Vedia with illustration by Mabel Esteban. The font in use is Onlysans Bold by Daria Cohen.

The late Argentine designer Luis Siquot (1945–2025) has left us with several typeface designs. We’ve seen his ITC Juanita in use for a book with paintings of African wildlife. Siquot also takes credit for a couple of album covers.

Shown here is his design for The Rite of Strings. The acoustic jazz fusion album by guitarist Al Di Meola, bassist Stanley Clarke, and violinist Jean-Luc Ponty was recorded at Studio 56, after the trio’s six-month world tour in 1995, and released by Gai Saber.

The cover shows a stylized illustration of the three kinds of string instruments, with many strong colors blended into each other.

For the typography, Siquot didn’t use his own fonts. The main typeface is Retro Bold. The all-caps slab serif was designed by Andrew Smith and Colin Brignall, quoting the Constructivist, Bauhaus, Art Deco, and Streamline movements as influences. It was issued in 1992 as one of Letraset’s last releases to be produced for dry transfer lettering, before switching entirely to their digital Fontek range.

The credits as well as the track names on the back and the CD itself are added in Lithos. Released in 1989 in Adobe’s fledgling Originals program, the lapidary sans was among Carol Twombly’s first published type designs for the Californian software company, together with Charlemagne and Trajan, and became quite ubiquitous in 1990s desktop publishing. “Artist management” is added in a bold italic style from Adobe Garamond by her colleague Robert Slimbach, also from 1989.

[More info on Discogs]

The Legal Notice sticker applied to this promotional copy features another Adobe release from 1989: for a while, David Siegel’s Tekton became at least as popular as Lithos, but since then has fallen out of fashion even more thoroughly.

Recordando a Arsenio is a compilation album with songs written by Arsenio Rodríguez, released in 1972 by Tico Records, and featuring various Latin artists such as Eddie Palmieri, Joe Cuba, Jimmy Sabater, Cortijo, Celia Cruz, Ray Barretto, and Tony Pabon. Chico Alvarez is credited as the album's designer, with the title being displayed in Davison Fandango, shifting from the uncommonly seen lowercase to capitals.

Below the title, an unidentified typeface is used for the artist names, meanwhile Times New Roman is used for the back.

[More info on Discogs]

A Night at the Beachcomber by guitar virtuoso John Adomono was recorded at the International Market Place, Honolulu, Hawaii, and released by Decca Records in 1961. From his bio at Discogs:

“John played alone, but most people thought there were five or six players on his records,” remembers Lu Woolley, his promoter and booking agent. “People were absolutely wowed by him. Nobody played like him.”

Adomono’s secret weapon was the Ecco-Fonic, a cutting-edge tape-echo machine. Alongside DeArmond’s Tremolo Control, it was one of the first stand-alone effects for the guitars and Adomono was one of the early testers, promoters, and endorsers.

On the uncredited cover, Adomono’s name is shown in red letters from the fett weight of Volta. The wide Clarendon with the superb figure–ground organization was designed by Konrad F. Bauer and Walter Baum and first cast by Bauer in 1956. The typeface used for “Guitarist fantastique” has German roots, too: it’s Berthold’s Akzidenz-Grotesk, known in the US under the name Standard. The bold condensed style is Akzidenz-Grotesk extra, added to the family by Günter Gerhard Lange in 1958.

[More info on Discogs]

PLINC’s West Behemoth Clarendon (1960) came accompanied by two italic styles; the plain Behemoth Italic, issued before 1965, and Behemoth Italic Swash, added around 1966. It’s distinguished from the earlier version not only by swash forms for capitals and several lowercase letters, but also has no entry strokes and less pronounced exit strokes. As of 2025, only the former has been digitized.

The latter can be seen on the cover of this compilation album by guitarist Gábor Szabó. It’s used in stacked and interlocked lines, with lowered caps on some.

[More info on Discogs]

Grand Funk is the second studio album by Grand Funk Railroad, released at the tail-end of 1969 by Capitol Records.

From Wikipedia:

Recorded at Cleveland Recording Company, the album was produced by Terry Knight and engineered by Ken Hamann. The album was certified gold by the RIAA, the first for the group. It includes a cover of the Animals’ 1966 song “Inside Looking Out”, which is still a staple of the band's live concerts.

The title on the front cover is set in Tension, a crop-and-repeat condensed geometric face offered by Photo-Lettering.

The credits on the back cover are set in Helvetica (regular). The group members' names on the inner gatefold are also set in Helvetica, with the credits underneath set in Linotype’s Garamond No. 3 (italic), a revival of Garamond.

[More info on Discogs]

This album by guitarist, composer and arranger Al Caiola (1920–2016) was released in 1960 by Time Records in their Series 2000. Murray Stein’s minimalist cover design translates the title to little more than a circle and six lines, representing a drumhead and strings. The shaded capitals are from Marble Heart.

[More info on Discogs]

Clarence Carter’s Patches is a soul album released in 1970 by Atlantic Records. The album cover was designed by Loring Eutemey and features typography set in Stencil.

The album title appears in bold caps, with each letter boxed with a dotted line, positioned above a sepia-toned close-up portrait of Carter (by Joel Brodsky). The typeface’s cutout style was widely used in the late 1960s and early 1970s for its strong visual presence.

[More info on Discogs]

Plastic Act is a project by Montreal based musician Josh Herlihey (he's also in the band Private Lives). In addition to writing and performing the music on this release, Josh also designed the artwork.

The Black weight of Central Type's Cadet is used for “Plastic Act” as well as the “45 RPM” on the labels. Garet is used for the song titles and credits.

[More info on Discogs]

“Peace In Gaza”, October 2024

Album and track artwork for inanityUKMusic. Western Democracy is inanityUK’s music creation project. The guitar based cosmic blues rock experiment is produced at Old Magnolia Studios in West Sussex. The chosen fonts are hoped to symbolise the laid back groove of the studio (Bauhaus 93) and the more heavier output within the music (Trajan).

Further seasonal art will be on view on my main site when finished.

Western Democracy – Pronounced: WESTƏʳN DꞮMⱰKRƏSI, September 2024

“delphinium”, September 2024

Comstock, a contoured variant of Standard Gothic, was used in yellow caps for the debut album by The Kingston Trio, released by Capitol Records.

According to Wikipedia,

The Kingston Trio was one of the most prominent groups of the era’s folk-pop boom, which they kick-started in 1958 with the release of the Trio's eponymous first album and its hit recording of “Tom Dooley”, which became a number one hit and sold over three million copies as a single. The Trio released nineteen albums that made Billboard’s Top 100, fourteen of which ranked in the top 10, and five of which hit the number 1 spot.

[More info on Discogs]

The 2023 Bristol Rhythm & Roots Reunion in downtown Bristol, Tennessee & Virginia, featured Margo Price and Nickel Creek, amongst other musicians.

HWT Etta East, the non-decorated member of Lynne Yun & Maxime Gau’s Etta family, is used for the name of the event. It's paired up with a sans serif typeface, Adam Ladd’s Gopher.

Poster

Still from the video trailer

Still from the video trailer

Still from the video trailer

Live & Well is a two-part electric blues album by B.B. King: the “Live” session (tracks 1 to 5) was performed in March 1969 live at the Village Gate in New York, whereas the “Well” session (tracks 6 to 10) is a studio recording made at The Hit Factory in January 1969. It was released as gatefold by BluesWay Records later that year.

The cover design by Byron Goto and Henry Epstein makes early use of Montgomery Pousse Cafe. The photography is by Ellen McNeilly.

[More info on Discogs]

Detail

Back cover with reversed (and too light) Helvetica caps

Via a suggestion by Javi Gonzales

The cover of this 1975 reissue of Music for Voice and Guitar from 1965 (LSC-2718) features a painting by Texas artist Tony Eubanks – and the elusive Bookman Meola.

The swash-laden Bookman interpretation was made in a single upright style and advertised by Berthold Fototype in September 1970. Initially listed without source information, a later catalog from 1982 credits the design to Robert Trogman’s Facsimile Fonts. In the first line, all but one letter (u) use swashy alternates. In the second one, the uncredited typographer showed more restraint and swashified only the caps and the f.

[More info on Discogs]

Another use of Bookman Swash Bold Italic by Ronald Clyne (see also Folk Songs of Puerto Rico from 1971), this time with swash alternates inserted exclusively for the caps and for two lowercase letters in terminal position.

From Folkways Records:

Recorded in 1973 this album showcases a variety of traditional folksongs of the Midwest performed by Loman D. Cansler. Cansler brings together a repertoire of folk songs that reflect "the rural, agrarian culture of our own immediate past".

[More info on Discogs]

A variant in paler colors