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Scott Walker – We Had It All album art

Contributed by Florian Hardwig on Mar 25th, 2019. Artwork published in .
Scott Walker – We Had It All album art 1
Source: www.flickr.com Klaus Hiltscher. License: All Rights Reserved.

We Had It All is the tenth studio album by Scott Walker. Released in August 1974, it was his final solo album for ten years. In the interim Walker reformed The Walker Brothers.

The cover was designed by Rosław Szaybo, with photography by M. Joseph. Szaybo served as the chief artistic director at CBS Records from 1972 to 1988. During this period, he designed over 2,000 album covers. His most famous work arguably is the cover for British Steel by Judas Priest.

For the typography of the Scott Walker album, Szaybo combined ITC Serif Gothic (Herb Lubalin & Tony Di Spigna, 1972) with a less commonly seen face: True Critt is an original by phototype company Headliners International, Inc. from New York. The uncredited design came in nine styles with inventive names; Hairy, Over-Easy, Critt ’n’ Grits, Love, True Blue, El Boldo, Beautifully Black, False, and Shazam. “Scott Walker” is in the outlined and shaded style, i.e. True Critt Shazam. There is no digital version of True Critt (and no-one has missed it so far, it seems).

ITC Serif Gothic’s “laughing” e is used in the title. This alternate is not included in the digital version.
Source: www.flickr.com Klaus Hiltscher. License: All Rights Reserved.

ITC Serif Gothic’s “laughing” e is used in the title. This alternate is not included in the digital version.

Style overview from Headliners neo-phototype(s), a ring binder catalog published 1977–79.
Source: www.flickr.com Scan: Stephen Coles. License: CC BY-NC-SA.

Style overview from Headliners neo-phototype(s), a ring binder catalog published 1977–79.

Typefaces

  • True Critt
  • ITC Serif Gothic

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2 Comments on “Scott Walker – We Had It All album art”

  1. I dug up the origin of True Critt in one of my Headliners binders. It was designed by Critt Graham in 1970.

    Critt Graham specimen panel

  2. Thanks for digging up the credit, Stephen!

    Obituary:

    Critt Gerald Graham, Sr., age 69 of Lilburn, GA died August 1, 2009. […] Mr. Graham attended UCLA Berkeley and graduated from California College of Fine Art, in Berkeley, CA with a Bachelors in Advertising Design and a Minor in Art History. Critt and Diane married in 1961 and formed Critt Graham + Associates in 1979, (Graphic Design firm). He was a founding member of AIGA of Atlanta, lover of the Arts and was a painter, photographer, sculptor and wood carver.

    Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

    Mr. Graham built the business by tapping into the virtually untapped market of annual reports […] Starting out with Coca-Cola and Goodyear, the firm would go on to develop, design and produce annual reports for dozens of other big-name companies, including Home Depot, Proctor & Gamble, Compaq, Royal Caribbean Cruises, SunTrust Banks and UPS.

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