Stereolab – Dots and Loops album art
Dots and Loops is the fifth studio album by English-French band Stereolab. It was released on 22 September 1997 by Duophonic Records and Elektra Records. As for numerous other Stereolab releases, the album art and campaign was designed by Julian House at Intro.
The Dots and Loops artwork shows the very rare use of the experimental Meander, created in 1972 by Russian designer Maxim Georgievich Zhukov. Meander is a modular design which utilizes a 4×4 grid for constructing characters. The experiment’s task was the “search for the most economical system of individualization of the forms of separate signs”. The font has entered the 1973 Letraset type design competition.
Julian’s use of Meander shows some interesting modifications, e.g., self-made T and L, R made out of Я; the cyrillic Б is repurposed as a Latin b. The typeface has also appeared in the artwork for the Miss Modular EP, which preceded the Dots and Loops album. It features Э used as D.
A page in The Lettering Art. Works by Moscow book designers 1959–1979, showing Zhukov’s Meander.
