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The Undisputed Truth – Face to Face with the Truth album art

Contributed by Florian Hardwig on Jan 5th, 2025. Artwork published in
January 1972
.
The Undisputed Truth – Face to Face with the Truth album art 1
Source: www.flickr.com Photo: oopswhoops. License: All Rights Reserved.

From Wikipedia:

The Undisputed Truth was an American Motown recording act assembled by record producer Norman Whitfield to experiment with his psychedelic soul production techniques. Joe “Pep” Harris served as main lead singer, with Billie Rae Calvin and Brenda Joyce Evans on additional leads and background vocals.

Face to Face with the Truth is their second album. Originally released in January 1972 on Motown’s subsidiary Gordy, the image shows a French pressing on the Tamla Motown label.

Cover by Norman Whitfield, with art direction by Curtis McNair and photography by Jim Hendin and Weldon Arthur McDougal III.

The band’s name is shown in a two-color setting of Gonzales Flair. The bold condensed display typeface with flaring stems and built-in long shade was drawn by Francisco Gonzales. It was issued by Photo-Lettering sometime between 1965 and 1971, in open and solid variants. Gonzales Flair has several extending swash letters (for A K W Y) that break up the band, but as far as I can tell from the limited specimens, there are no alternate glyphs.

The open typeface used for the title is also from Photo-Lettering, and likewise wasn’t featured on Fonts In Use before: it’s Lamkay Classic Shaded, one of two all-caps romans drawn by Victor Lamkay, here set on a curve, with fanned letterforms. It is older than Flair, and already appeared in PLINC’s 1950 catalog.

[More info on Discogs]

Gonzales Flair B and A as shown in Photo-Lettering’s Alphabet Thesaurus, vol. 3 from 1971. The first line shows style B with extended proportions, as indicated by the letter e behind the catalog number.
Photo: Florian Hardwig. License: CC BY-NC-SA.

Gonzales Flair B and A as shown in Photo-Lettering’s Alphabet Thesaurus, vol. 3 from 1971. The first line shows style B with extended proportions, as indicated by the letter e behind the catalog number.

Typefaces

  • Gonzales Flair
  • Lamkay Classic Shaded
  • Univers

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3 Comments on “The Undisputed Truth – Face to Face with the Truth album art”

  1. Great find and contribution Florian
    One question: you write about the extending swash letters above.
    Did you see a Y with swash anywhere?
    Thanks

  2. Thanks! There’s a Y on the Gwen, In Green book cover:

    It has about the same swash as the W.

  3. oh my eyes are getting older ;-)
    thanks

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