Ginger Baker’s Air Force – “Man Of Constant Sorrow” German single cover
Contributed by Florian Hardwig on Jul 21st, 2018. Artwork published in
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German release of Ginger Baker’s Air Force’s cover of “Man Of Constant Sorrow” (1970). The typography brings together two faces by Photo-Lettering; Mierop Ginger Snap (1969; LTypI alert!) and Davison Arabesque (1968). Stylistically, the extruded geometric Art Deco letters with cookie-cutter counters and the amorphous psychedelic caps with reversed contrast don’t go well together; just as the orange is not the best complement to the red, white and blue from the RAF roundel. Printed by Gebrüder Jänecke in Hanover, Germany.
2 Comments on “Ginger Baker’s Air Force – “Man Of Constant Sorrow” German single cover”
So how do any of these Photo-Lettering faces got into Europe like this and others?
That’s a great question which I’m interested in myself!
I suppose one could order set type from abroad – at least PLINC mentions airmail delivery in their catalogs. Not sure if this was a thing – it must have been expensive, and hence not widespread.
Some of the PLINC originals were copied more or less directly by other type providers that licensed their film fonts internationally. Filmotype’s Vigus is virtually identical to Davison Arabesque (it’s another revival based on the same piece of lettering by J.M. Bergling), and was available in Europe. However, the version used on this sleeve appears to be PLINC’s Davison Arabesque, not Vigus. Fernando pointed us to a Brazilian knock-off of Ginger Snap. Such a copy might have been available in Europe, too, but I have yet to spot one in the catalogs by German typesetting studios.
It was fairly common to re-use set type from existing designs, see the second image in this post. In this case, I don’t know of a previous American cover (or poster) design from which the lines could have been copied.
A few alphabets were reproduced in design magazines and annuals, and designers occasionally reproduced letterforms from those, assembling them in words by means of (analog) copying and pasting.