70's album art

The topic of this post will be 70's album art.  As I have a wide selection of images I would like to discuss, I will be far more brief in my clumsy dissections of their use of type/design.

To start off, I thought I would take a look at a classic David Bowie album, entitled Diamond Dogs (1974).  While all Bowie album covers did nothing to dispute Bowie's image of creative eccentricity or ambiguity, this is actually one of his few 70's albums to feature a custom, personalized typeface (his other albums were typically san-serif typefaces, with some variation, written in all caps).  It was around 1974 that Glam Rock was on the rise, and the lightning motif adopted by the "Bowie" logo is in fact representative of the glam movement, and can see repeated in a variety of glam and glam-inspired rock (Kiss famously made use of the lightning motif in their own logo) as well as other media, such as the 1974 film Phantom Of The Paradise.  Many regard Diamond Dogs as not only Bowie's best album, but as the album most representative of glam rock (along with Lou Reed's Transformer).

Having mentioned Kiss in the last breath, I might as well post a Kiss album image.  Alive! (1975) was Kiss' fourth album, but the famous band logo was established in their self-titled first, released in 1974.  As previously noted, it sports two lightning bolts.  The  premier signature of glam rock, the lightning bolt can also be seen repeated in the foreground guitarist's outfit.  Additional glam iconography includes makeup, silver/reflective material, metal studs, and riser shoes.  But for the purposes of this blog, it is the logo that makes and completes the image.  I will note that the stencil typeface "Alive" does not seem to fit into any of this, and appears forlorn and unnoticed in the corner.

I looked for some unusual/obscure album art, and found several.  One of them is the self-titled Hawkwind.  Here, the logo appears to made up of seeds, which drift down to an alien orange landscape.  The role of the logo in this case is illustrative, and appears to show the seeds forming piles out of which strange creatures are emerging.  The seed shape is repeated in these creatures.  The narrative role of the logo is unique, and tells a story about both the logo and the band.

Next is Citadel by Starcastle, a 70's progressive/electronic band.  I love classic sci-fi art, so I was a bit of a sucker for this album cover.  However, the logo is particularly interesting.  The letters almost appear to be made out of smooth, hollow glass, teasing light upon their surfaces.  The "C" almost completely encloses the "A", while the leg of the "R" extends to cradle the "C" and repeat the arc of the stroke.  Rules on either side of the leg support it, and produce a natural framing effect for the word "CITADEL" below.  The bars of the letter "A" and "E" rest on top of, or in front of, the rest of the letter as separate pieces, and all of the letters are kerned together to produce both flow and tension.  A really excellent logo, actually.

I ran across this album cover and really dug it.  It's by a band called S.O.S.  Like the other sci-fi themed covers, it has a strong element of the fantastic --- LOVE the rocket-propelled zeppelin roaring through the stratosphere.  Check out the highly stylized logo too, though.  It appears to be made of bands of gold.  The banding has the additional effect of creating a strobing effect, heightening visual interesting.  Variety is established through the shift to a central line along the spines of the "S"'s.

Plastic People by Birth Control is not only a surrealistic album cover, but another example of an intriguing logo typeface.  It appears to be similar to Century Gothic, though with a much lower x-height.  "T" and "H" have been formed into an unusual ligature, and one might even say the same thing of the "C" and "O", which conform to each other so well that they almost become a new letter.  There is another unusual ligature between "N" and "T."  If ligatures suggest transformation or even the alien, I would say they suit the logo in this album cover very well.

Last, and definitely NOT falling in the electronica vein, is James Brown's 1971 Super Bad.  Like the man himself, the typeface is larger than life and, with its thick strokes and strong vertical orientation, makes a statement.  The light purple is an unusual choice of color, but achieves high visibility in contrast to the black album cover.  The best part is the "empty" letter "U", which has been filled with James Brown's name.  Efficient and Super Bad!