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-rpm ...

Early life

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

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

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for

Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese conglomerate Sony. It was founded on January 15, 1889, evolving from the A ...

, 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 ...

. "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 World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, 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,

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, 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

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, 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 We ...

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, Remington, 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 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

Everest Mount Everest (; Tibetic languages, Tibetan: ''Chomolungma'' ; ) is List of highest mountains on Earth, Earth's highest mountain above sea level, located in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas. The China–Nepal border ru ...

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 cast recording of ''

South Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

'' (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

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bottle. In 1942, Steinweiss hired Jim Flora, 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 and then in 2002 traveling to the Experience Music Project in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region o ...

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 ...

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

.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. Notably ...

, 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.

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. In 2003, CMP Information and the International Recording Media Association 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, ...

, 2009.

External links