Alex Steinweiss: The Inventor of the Modern Album Cover (VARIA)
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Music
Alex Steinweiss: The Inventor of the Modern Album Cover (VARIA) Details
About the Author Artist: The father of record design is Alex Steinweiss, who in 1940, at the age of 23, single-handedly invented the album cover. He made thousands of classical, jazz, and pop covers for Columbia, London, Decca, and Everest and his modern designs graced the packaging, logos, and covers of dozens of distilleries, film studios, and magazines; earning him an AIGA Medal and the Art Directors Hall of Fame lifetime achievement award. Also a fine artist, Steinweiss and his wife live in Sarasota, FL. Authors: Kevin Reagan is a triple Grammy Award-winning art director, also honored by the AIGA, Print, and Communication Arts. As former art director of Geffen, MCA, and Maverick, he designed packages for Madonna, Beck, Sonic Youth and many others. He lives in Los Angeles. Steven Heller, co-chair of the School of Visual Arts MFA Designer as Author Program, writes the "Visuals" column for the New York Times Book Review, and is the author of 120 books on design, illustration, and satiric art. Read more
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Reviews
Steinweiss is famous for doing many, many record album jacket designs during the period of about 1940--1965. He pioneered a unique style which is all his, though it owes something to other Midcentury Moderne sensibilities. I, in fact, remember seeing, as a kid in the 60's and 70's, a number of these album covers in the collections of my grandparents and the parents of friends and neighbors. Steinweiss had a very bold, unrestrained color sensibility, which I must admit, is often not to my liking--- it often seems crude, strident and kitschy to me, yet this sumptuous, huge monograph is a valuable part of any modern graphic designer's library, or in the library of Midcentury record enthusiasts.
