Alexander Steinweiss (March 24, 1917 – July 17, 2011) was an American graphic design artist known for inventing

album cover art An album cover (also referred to as album art) is the front packaging art of a commercially released studio album or other audio recordings. The term can refer to either the printed paperboard covers typically used to package sets of and 78-r ...

Early life

Alex Steinweiss was born on March 24, 1917, in Brooklyn. His father was a women's shoe designer from

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...

and his mother was a seamstress from

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. They moved to the

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Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

and eventually settled in the

Brighton Beach Brighton Beach is a List of Brooklyn neighborhoods, neighborhood in the southern portion of the New York City Borough (New York City), borough of Brooklyn, within the greater Coney Island area along the Atlantic Ocean coastline. Brighton Beach i ...

section of Brooklyn. Steinweiss said he was destined to be a commercial artist. He studied under

Leon Friend Leon Friend (February 22, 1902 – June 11, 1969) was a graphic design educator. Biography Leon Friend was born in Warsaw, Poland on February 22, 1902, later immigrating to Schenectady, New York in 1905. He married Ann Bickel and together had ...

at Abraham Lincoln High School, and his classmates marveled that he "could take a brush, dip it in some paint and make letters," he recalled. "So I said to myself, 'If some day I could become a good sign painter, that would be terrific!"' Steinweiss earned a scholarship to the

Parsons School of Design Parsons School of Design, known colloquially as Parsons, is a private art and design college located in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Founded in 1896 after a group of progressive artists broke away from established Manhatt ...

Career

After graduation Steinweiss worked for three years for the Austrian poster designer Joseph Binder, whose flat color and simplified human figures were popular at the time and influenced his own work. In the 1930s recorded music was sold in plain packaging, or record shop advertising 'bags'; sets of discs were also usually issued in plain albums. However, colored artwork had been used on special albums, from World War I. This was separately printed and pasted onto album covers and occasionally inside the albums: for example, HMV's issue of Liza Lehmann's "In a Persian Garden" and operettas by Edward German and Gilbert & Sullivan were all available by 1918 in such decorated albums. In 1938, Alex Steinweiss was the first

art director Art director is the title for a variety of similar job functions in theater, advertising, marketing, publishing, fashion, film industry, film and television, the Internet, and video games. It is the charge of a sole art director to supervise and ...

for

Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music, Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese Conglomerate (company), conglomerate Sony. It was founded on Janua ...

, where he introduced a wider application of

album cover An album cover (also referred to as album art) is the front packaging art of a commercially released studio album or other audio recordings. The term can refer to either the printed paperboard covers typically used to package sets of and 78-r ...

s and

cover art Cover art is a type of artwork presented as an illustration or photograph on the outside of a published product such as a book (often on a dust jacket), magazine, newspaper ( tabloid), comic book, video game (box art), music album (album art), ...

. "They were so drab, so unattractive," said Steinweiss, "I convinced the executives to let me design a few." During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, Steinweiss became

' advertising manager. He left for a job at the Navy's Training and Development Center in New York City, where he produced teaching materials and cautionary posters. After the war, Steinweiss freelanced for Columbia. During one lunch meeting there, the company's president,

Ted Wallerstein TED may refer to: Economics and finance * TED spread between U.S. Treasuries and Eurodollar Education * ''Türk Eğitim Derneği'', the Turkish Education Association ** TED Ankara College Foundation Schools, Turkey ** Transvaal Education Depart ...

, introduced him to an innovation that the company was about to unveil: the long-playing record. But there was a problem. The heavy, folded kraft paper used to protect 78 rpm records left marks on the vinyl microgroove when 33 1/3 rpm LPs were stacked. Steinweiss was asked to develop a jacket for the new format and, with help from his brother-in-law, found a manufacturer, Imperial Paper Box, that was willing to invest about $250,000 in equipment. Louis Sukoff from Imperial Paper Box held the patent for the phonograph record housing also known as the record jacket. Steinweiss was active in record cover design from 1938 until 1973, when he semi-retired to devote himself to painting. By his own admission, he designed roughly 2500 covers. His career can be divided into roughly five periods: From 1938 to perhaps 1945, he designed all the covers for Columbia. During this period, he developed the entire graphic "language" of album design. The second period is from 1945 to roughly 1950, during which he was no longer the sole designer for Columbia. He also began designing for other companies. This period is sometimes described as the "First Golden Age" of the album cover. Steinweiss' signature

font In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design. In mod ...

, the "Steinweiss scrawl," first appeared in roughly 1947. Steinweiss claims to have invented the LP cover, which first appeared in 1948. Steinweiss can also take credit for the Grecian column design Columbia used in 1948 on the first LP envelopes. The design was borrowed from the earlier 78 rpm album cover, MM577, the Mendelssohn violin concerto played by Nathan Milstein. This performance was chosen by Columbia to be the first 12-inch LP, ML4001. Starting in around 1950, Steinweiss did the covers and record label for Remington, and began a more than 20-year association with both

Decca Decca may refer to: Music * Decca Records or Decca Music Group, a record label * Decca Gold, a classical music record label owned by Universal Music Group * Decca Broadway, a musical theater record label * Decca Studios, a recording facility in W ...

and

London Records London Recordings (or London Records and London Music Stream) is a British record label that marketed records in the United States, Canada, and Latin America for Decca Records from 1947 to 1980 before becoming semi-independent. The London nam ...

. Like his earlier periods, most of his early 1950s designs are drawn, for Columbia,

RCA The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...

Remington Remington may refer to: Organizations * Remington Arms, American firearms manufacturer * Remington Rand, American computer manufacturer * Remington Products, American manufacturer of shavers and haircare products * Remington College, American c ...

, Decca and London. This was his third period, when he did drawing, lettering, and layout that was often brilliant but perhaps not as memorable as his late 1940s period. It was during this period that he collaborated with

Margaret Bourke-White Margaret Bourke-White (; June 14, 1904 – August 27, 1971), an American list of photographers, photographer and documentary photography, documentary photographer, became arguably best known as the first foreign photographer permitted to take p ...

on a memorable series of covers for Columbia. Starting in the mid-1950s, Steinweiss added photography to his palette. Steinweiss's photographic covers are remarkably distinctive. He utilized strange garish colors, odd lighting, and numerous visual puns and reference points. He continued to work for Decca and London, and did the entire series of covers (and the logo and label) for the startup

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label from 1958 until about 1960. This was his fourth period, characterized by photography but continuing to use the entire range of tools he had developed. Steinweiss' final period of record cover design was from 1960 to roughly 1973, again working for Decca and London. His new developments of the period were in die-cut designs and collage. Steinweiss's cover for the original

Broadway Broadway may refer to: Theatre * Broadway Theatre (disambiguation) * Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S. ** Broadway (Manhattan), the street **Broadway Theatre (53rd Stree ...

cast recording of '' South Pacific'' (1949) has been in almost continuous use ever since for the 78rpm set, the LP, the 45rpm set, various tape formats and the CD. The only other graphic design in America to be used for so many years is the

Coca-Cola Coca-Cola, or Coke, is a carbonated soft drink manufactured by the Coca-Cola Company. Originally marketed as a temperance drink and intended as a patent medicine, it was invented in the late 19th century by John Stith Pemberton in Atlanta ...

bottle. In 1942, Steinweiss hired

Jim Flora James Flora (January 25, 1914 ‒ July 9, 1998), best known for his distinctive and idiosyncratic album cover art for RCA Victor and Columbia Records during the 1940s and 1950s, was also a prolific commercial illustrator from the 1940s to the ...

, which launched Flora's 40+ year career as a commercial artist. In 2001, Steinweiss was featured in Carlo McCormick's gallery show "The LP Show," originating in New York's

Exit Art Exit Art was a non-profit cultural center that ran from 1982 to 2012 that exhibited contemporary visual art, installation, video, theater, and performance in New York City, United States. In its last location in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, it was ...

and then in 2002 traveling to the

Experience Music Project The Museum of Pop Culture or MoPOP is a nonprofit museum in Seattle, Washington, dedicated to contemporary popular culture. It was founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen in 2000 as the Experience Music Project. Since then MoPOP has organized ...

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and

The Andy Warhol Museum The Andy Warhol Museum is located on the North Shore of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the United States. It is the largest museum in North America dedicated to a single artist. The museum holds an extensive permanent collection of art and archive ...

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.Lafreniere, Steve
"Covers story: Steve Lafreniere on 'The LP Show'"

Artforum ''Artforum'' is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ x 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notabl ...

, Summer 2002. He was interviewed for a chapter in ''Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture'' (The MIT Press, 2008) edited by Paul D. Miller a.k.a.

DJ Spooky Paul Dennis Miller (born September 6, 1970), known professionally as DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid, is an American electronic and experimental hip hop musician whose work is often called by critics "illbient" or "trip hop". He is a turntabli ...

Death

Alex Steinweiss died on July 18, 2011, in Sarasota, Florida. His death was confirmed by his son. In addition to his son, he is survived by a daughter, Hazel Steinweiss, six grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

Awards

In 1998, Steinweiss was inducted into the

Art Directors Club Hall of Fame The Art Directors Club Hall of Fame was established in 1971, by the Art Directors Club of New York, a professional organization in the design and creative industries. The Art Directors Club selects its honorees from those "who have made significant ...

. In 2003, CMP Information and the

International Recording Media Association The International Recording Media Association (IRMA), previously known as the International Tape Association (ITA), was an international trade association dealing with every facet of recording, media and related industries. Their membership includes ...

created the Alex Awards for Excellence in

, which were named in honor of Alex Steinweiss.

Sources and further reading

* Alex Steinweiss, Jennifer McKnight-Trontz. ''For the Record: The Life and Work of Alex Steinweiss'' , Princeton Architectural Press; 2000. * Eric Kohler, ''In the Groove: Vintage Record Graphics, 1940-1960'' () Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 1999. * Heller, Steven; Pomeroy, Karen, ''Design Literacy: Understanding Graphic Design'' () Watson-Guptill Pubns, NY, 1997. One chapter on Steinweiss. * Chusid, Irwin
''The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora''
(

Fantagraphics Books Fantagraphics (previously Fantagraphics Books) is an American publisher of alternative comics, classic comic strip anthologies, manga, magazines, graphic novels, and the erotic Eros Comix imprint. History Founding Fantagraphics was found ...

, 2004); features an interview with Steinweiss * Heller, Steven, and Reagan, Kevin
''Alex Steinweiss, The Inventor of the Modern Album Cover''
,

Taschen Taschen is a luxury art book publisher founded in 1980 by Benedikt Taschen in Cologne, Germany. As of January 2017, Taschen is co-managed by Benedikt and his eldest daughter, Marlene Taschen. History The company began as Taschen Comics, pu ...

, 2009.

External links