Perez Prado / Eddie Maynard and His Latin Rhythms – Dance Party album art
Dance Party is the title of a mambo compilation album first released in 1958. According to Discogs, this reissue is “mainly a collection by Eddie Maynard and His Latin Rhythms. A few numbers by Perez Prado (Tracks A4, B4 and B6) are also featured.”
The cover design by Sam Suliman has lettering that can traced back to Cool Face. This lowercase alphabet was drawn by Swiss graphic artist Armin Haab and reproduced in Lettera 2, a source book with typefaces, alphabets, and lettering samples edited by Haab together with Walter Haettenschweiler and published by Niggli in 1961.
Despite the editors’ notice that the “reproduction of the alphabets […] and their use by the printing trade require the special permission by the designers”, Lettergraphics made a phototype adaptation of Cool Face, under a different name – Stein Long – and without credits.
It’s unclear whether Suliman worked from the reproduction in Lettera – as intended by the book’s editors – or whether he used the typeface. Chances are it’s the former: the album was released in 1962, shortly after the book came out. I don’t know when Stein Long was released. The earliest showing I’ve seen is in a 1968 catalog. In any case, the cover designer made various modifications: cutting off the spurs in adpr, turning the p’s into P’s, and adjusting the height of the letterforms so that the baseline follows the curved shape of the colorful maraca.
Cool Face as shown in Lettera 2
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The same year, Suliman used Cool Face for another album cover, by Sarah Vaughan:
In 2020, this use inspired Keith Bates of K-Type to design a typeface indirectly based on Cool Face. It’s named Sam Suliman, in honor of the cover designer.