Neil Young & Crazy Horse – Weld album art
Front cover.
The album art for Weld maybe isn’t the most spectacular, but probably one of the more prominent uses of Beowolf. Beowolf is “the original RandomFont, engineered and imagined by Erik van Blokland and Just van Rossum in 1989.” – LettError. It was released in 1990 with FontShop, laying the foundation for what would soon after become the FontFont library. To quote from a previous contribution by Dan Rhatigan:
In its original version, shown here, [Beowolf] was an exploration of what could be done with the now-deprecated PostScript Type 3 font format, which allowed for extra programming instructions in a font. Each letter shape changed in a random pattern each time it was printed, so that it never, ever looked the same.
Compare the repeating letters to see what this means, for example the four O’s and N’s on the two discs shown below. All these glyphs didn’t really exist as prefabricated letterforms in the font file, only as potential results of the randomization. With the exception of the handwritten title, Beowolf is used for pretty much all the text, from the credits in the inserts to the discs themselves.
The Weld album was designed by Janet Levinson. After a first stint at Chrysalis Records, Levinson served as Art Director for Motown from 1983 to 1986. For the ensuing eleven years, she worked for Warner Records, eventually in the role of Executive Art Director. Since 2007, Levinson is with Chase Design Group.
Inner side of the insert (Disc One).
Back of the insert, featuring the Crazy Horse stage art by Rebecca Holland.
