The De-Fenders – The De-Fenders Play The Big Ones album art
Record companies sometimes skimped when it came to paying for a cover photograph. Especially in cases that were about the debut release of an upcoming band, the budget often only allowed for a typographic approach. Lucky for us typophiles!
Issued in 1963, The De-Fenders Play The Big Ones was the surf rock band’s first (and last) record to be released on World Pacific. Art director Woody Woodward made sure that, depite the constraints, the cover turned out a real eye catcher. He used a stacked and justified setting of Inserat-Grotesk, mainly in its uppercase, and went all in with the colors. When two or three track names sit on the same line, they’re separated by a yellow square, yielding a nice counterpoint to the wall of compressed type. The secondary bits are set in Folio extrafett.
On the back cover, the lockup in Inserat-Grotesk is repeated smaller and in black. It’s paired with liner notes in Caledonia Bold Italic and a more detailed track listing in two weights of Trade Gothic Extended with single-storey g.
1 Comment on “The De-Fenders – The De-Fenders Play The Big Ones album art”
Woody Woodward pulled the same trick more than once. Here are his designs for 12 String Guitar! / Folk Blues & Blue Grass (1963) and The Original Great Northwest Hits Volume One (1964). Both record covers likewise feature a healthy helping of multicolored Inserat-Grotesk.