The Düsseldorf Düsterboys – Nenn mich Musik album art

The Düsseldorf Düsterboys is a band from Essen, Germany (near Düsseldorf). Nenn mich Musik (Call me music) is their first album. The album cover does without any colour, fully relying on the power of type and illustration. The drawings were created by Hans-Joachim Behrendt, a German wood engraver and illustrator. Arranged in a circular fashion, they are reminiscent of an eye, forming a greyish iris around the white pupil at the centre.

The name of the band is set in Robert Slimbach’s Garamond Premier, an old-style typeface that comes in four optical sizes. Quite appropriately for an album cover, the cut intended for largest sizes (Display) was used in the Light weight. The two content words use the capitals of the Roman style (with some tracking thankfully added). The only obvious difference from the off-the-shelf font is the modification of Ü whose umlaut dots have started floating around. The first word of the band’s name, was – shall we say, crammed? –into the large counter of the first D. Its letters were taken from the italic style of the Light Display cut. The first two letters have merged into a Th ligature (which Robert Slimbach is quite fond of, judging by its presence in many of his fonts); the glyph seen here is the swash variant of the ligature. The e is, surprisingly, nothing more than an e.

The title of the album is fairly hidden in small type in a corner of the cover. (Before learning that this is the title, I assumed it to be the label that published the album.) The capital letters (with some tracking thankfully added) are taken from Gill Sans Nova, a redrawn and expanded version of the original Gill Sans typeface. The N and E glyphs with protruding elements are swash variants. U with a spur is taken from Stylistic Set 2.