These include 41 ( font anomaly), 4193 Art Blakey’s Indestructible, 4203 Andrew Hill’s Andrew!!, 4219 Wayne Shorter’s All seeing Eye, and many other titles assigned a catalogue number by Blue Note Records Inc but whose release was produced by Liberty Records Inc. Miles Reid’s influence was replaced by whatever designers were in favour with the new owners Liberty, and United Artists,Ī large sans-serif catalogue number on the back cover is associated with “Liberty-NY Blue Note” – cover manufactured for Liberty. Within a year or so the Catalogue number had shrunk to insignificance and then all-but disappeared from the jacket design. Then suddenly, sometime between 19 the house style of Blue Note covers changed from serif to sans-serif, coinciding with the change of management to Liberty Records. In the early days the catalogue number follows the Arts/Title in Bodoni Bold, though later on a sans-serif face was deployed,įrom 1956, the classic serif font is found on most Blue Note 1500 series and most of the 4000 series Blue Note originals in the Blue Note Years. Song Titles: a san serif face (unknown), in upper caseīody Copy: Franklin Gothic (sans serif face popularly used for legibility) The track-listing contrasts in a small bold sans-serif face.Īrtist Name, Album Title, Catalogue Number and artist credits : Bodoni Bold The catalogue number, headline album title and artist name and instrument players was set in Bodoni Bold. The back cover of Blue Notes operated a “house style” of sorts, with the three-column body copy set in a font selected purely for maximum readability, typically Franklin Gothic. Typography professionals have spotted these well-known Blue Note covers, and identified the font used in the design. The choice of fonts was eclectic, selected for dramatic effect, and often blended with photographic elements. Reid Miles Blue Note covers elevated fonts to an essential part of cover design, integrating large blocks of text with carefully cropped or enlarged photo of the artist by Francis Wolff. The detail of Blue Note label printing by Liberty continues at the end of this section. The most prominent design element of Intertype Vogue is the shape of the capital G, a perfect geometric round character. The example below is a later Liberty release label, but illustrates the continuity of typesetting Blue Note labels in Intertype Vogue. The paperstock used is quite fine high quality, which maintains sharpness of text by preventing ink from bleeding through into neighbouring fibres. Keystone labels generally have a slightly different greenish-tint ink for the album detail than for the corporate elements, which were usually in reflex blue. For Blue Note artist and album titles, Keystone used the geometric sans-serif font Intertyp e Vogue, in upper case only, with a range of different point-sizes, for fit and emphasis Keystone was equipped with the Intertype make of line-casting machines. Print technology in this time used hot-metal typesetting, using line-casting machines. These font-sets are effectively the signature of the printer, and often a signpost to the pressing plant. Keystone maintained the Blue Note template for corporate elements of the label design, while individual titles had their unique content typeset seperately, and fitted into this template.ĭifferent print suppliers favoured different makes of printing machines, for whom competing foundaries made proprietary font sets. From 1956 to 1966, and likely earlier, Blue Note labels were typeset and printed by Keystone Printed Specialties, Scranton PA. The Collector needs to pay close attention to detail, and to make side-by-side comparisons that make differences jump out.Ĭollector’s most fruitful encounter with typography is the Blue Note record center label, which contains all-important detail of origin. The point illustrates how easily our brains interpolate – fill in the gaps, and see what we expect to see, rather than attend to what is actually there. Not a lot of people know that, or need to, as it is completely irrelevant. On every Blue Note label, the one in “thirty three and one-third” speed is sans-serif if it is Mono, and with serif if it is Stereo. Collector’s Guide to the Blue Note fonts (warning: Geek Rating 11/10)
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