Miles Davis – Kind of Blue album art
Contributed by Bryson Stohr on Mar 21st, 2026. Artwork published in
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Source: www.searchablemuseum.com License: All Rights Reserved.
Kind of Blue is Miles Davis’ sixth album for Columbia Records, released in 1959.
The light grotesque seen here for the name of the artist and the album title is Dom Grotesk Condensed 3 – the former in all caps and the latter with enlarged caps. No designer is credited. The photography is by Jay Maisel.
Source: archive.org License: All Rights Reserved.
For the stereo release, the whole design was moved down.
2 Comments on “Miles Davis – Kind of Blue album art”
I did a little bit of a deep dive on this today, scanning an original mono jacket and both Dom Grotesk 2 and 3 – visually it absolutely looked like 3 just eyeballing but much to my surprise when I put the 2 scan beside the jacket it’s a match, so I think some part of the actual printing of the jacket makes it appear a bit thicker on the Kind of Blue.
Thanks for sharing this insight, John. Yes, showing type in reverse can mess with the perceived weight.
Coincidentally, I had made such a scan as well – for making a typeface sample for Dom Grotesk – but failed to compare the weights against the cover type.