Wednesday, February 24, 2016


INFLUENCE.

Let’s obsess over an illustrative and typography genius for a minute. Have you heard of Alex Steinweiss? Don’t worry, neither had I until a few months ago but he did something pretty amazing back in 1939 when he invented the album cover when he was just 23 (I know, we all feel like we’ve been slacking now!). Besides being a complete visionary in the music industry he was also an extremely talented illustrator, with a unique and original style. See some of his work below!
 

You can see that Alex enjoyed using mostly original illustrative work that was unique to his mid-century modern style. Whimsical, playful but thoughtful.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Alex was also known for keeping his color palette simple, mostly 4 colors or less in every cover. This practice is used to help viewers really enjoy the artwork without being distracted by a rainbow of colors. You can see this influence is almost all of my work.
 
 
 
 
Alex experimented with several original forms of typography, most famous for this curly hand-drawn lettering. His lettering became so popular it was copyrighted as ‘Steinweiss Scrawl.'
 
 
 
I hope you enjoyed a quick introduction and run-through of Alex’s work. Maybe he’ll inspire you to create something new and amazing! Until next time

 -T

 
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If you would like to learn more about Alex Steinweiss or view more of the 850 album covers that he designed for Columbia Records you can visit some of the links below!
 
 
 
 

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