Janoschka magazine Linked_V4_2019

issue #4 ©
l i n k e d
21
Record sleeves in colour – a simple
but ingenious idea
It probably didn't occur to Alex Steinweiss that he was creating a new art form
when he became the first person to illustrate a shellac record cover with a motif
back in 1940. At the time, he was a twenty-three-year-old designer working for
Columbia Records in Connecticut. Before this simple stroke of genius, shellac
records had been packaged in a uniform grey cardboard sleeve. Steinweiss
changed that. His first cover design was for a record by Broadway songwriters
Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. He had a photographer capture the illuminated
lettering "Rodgers & Hart" on a New York theatre on camera; to this he added the
stylised grooves of a shellac record and hey presto: there was his image.
It was an enormous success. Columbia Records experienced a major increase
in sales, and Steinweiss became a leading light in the newly discovered world of
cover design. In an interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper in 2010,
he described what was behind his idea: "I wanted people to see the cover and
immediately hear the music." A credo that remains valid to this day. "There’s more
to the picture than meets the eye," is a line from a song by rock legend Neil Young.
And he was quite right, because an image can conjure up more than just sound
in the mind's eye (or ear). A record cover can also be a statement. It has the
power to communicate an attitude and to leave its stamp on an artist's image.
Sometimes on that of an entire generation.
One record company that succeeded in doing this quite early on is the jazz
label Blue Note Records. Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, two German Jews
who emigrated to the United States, founded the label in 1939. Both were
reputed to have a strong affinity with the world-famous Bauhaus – perhaps
that's why the covers of the albums they released helped them to establish a
design benchmark.