Iggy Pop – The Idiot album art
Happy birthday, Iggy!
The Idiot is the debut solo studio album by Iggy Pop, released in March 1977, shortly before his 30th birthday. It was produced by his friend David Bowie, who composed most of the music and contributed a major portion of the instrumentation. Just like Bowie’s own Heroes, which was released in October of the same year, The Idiot has a black-and-white cover with a photograph inspired by Roquairol (1917), a painting by German expressionist artist and Brücke member Erich Heckel. The photo was taken by Andy Kent.
The typeface is the surprisingly obscure Franklin Gothic Wide. This late addition to Morris F. Benton’s iconic gothic was drawn by Bud Renshaw for ATF about 1952. There are plenty of digital versions of Franklin Gothic, but to my knowledge, not a single one that covers the Wide style. Fonts In Use partner Nick Sherman recently launched his own interpretation. HEX Franklin comes in variable font format, with axes for weight and width. Who knows – seeing this might animate him to extend the latter?! I’ll admit that much of Franklin Gothic’s charm lies in its horizontal compactness, though.
2 Comments on “Iggy Pop – The Idiot album art”
I’ve already started tests for Wide variants of HEX Franklin. :)
From the research I’ve done, ATF’s later wide variants of Franklin Gothic are decidedly more wonky than the normal, Condensed, and (my favorite of all) Extra Condensed widths.
In the meantime I noticed that Dennis Ortiz-Lopez offers a digital version of Franklin Wide with Italic.