The elusive Williamson Template by Robert Williamson, King of Redonda, in use for a 1971 album by Canadian jazz pianist Paul Bley (1932–2016).

Cover design by Rhea Atkins, featuring photography by Price Givens (front) and Chuck Stewart (back).

[More info on Discogs]

The back cover repeats the title in Template, here shown integrated in a photo of Bley’s audio equipment. Track list, credits, and the liner notes by Michael Cuscuna (1948–2024) are set in News Gothic. The Milestone logo uses Cooper Black Italic with a swash initial.

Electric Lady Studios was commissioned by Jimi Hendrix in 1968 and designed by audio engineer Eddie Kramer and architect John Storyk from 1969 to 1970. The studio’s building was formerly a nightclub before being converted into a studio for Hendrix and other musicians along the 1970s.

A modified version of Photo-Lettering's Williamson Template is used for the studio's logo, with notable differences such as wider characters, and oval counters.

Rolling Stones’ recording session bill with logo, Dec 14, 1979

Plaque with logo and building number prior to renovation

Business card

Demo reel to reel tape box with logo

Photo-Lettering, Inc. is sometimes hailed as a center of typographic inventiveness, fueled by the work of numerous skilled lettering artists. And there’s truth to that. However, not all of the tens of thousands of styles in their phototype library are great, obviously.

Williamson Template is arguably one of the weakest PLINC designs. Combining letterforms made of straight monolinear strokes with big circular counters, the face can only score on a conceptual level, if at all. Even within the already naïve genre of cookie-cutter faces (see e.g. Shotgun), Template stands out as being simplistic. A can be distinguished from R merely by the position of the counter. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t see a lot of use. In fact, this paperback cover is the only time I’ve ever seen it outside type catalogs. Chances are Template was chosen because its counters resemble the holes and planets in Carol Inouye’s cover art. Adding insult to injury, it’s used with stretched letterforms. Alien Island is a science fiction novel written by T.L. Sherred (1915–1985) and published by Ballantine Books in 1970.

[More info on ISFDb]