Alex Steinweiss

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

Born on March 24, 1917 in Brooklyn, Alex Steinweiss was the son of a women's shoe designer from Warsaw and a seamstress from Riga, Latvia.

His parents had first moved to the Lower East Side of Manhattan and later on, settled in the Brighton Beach area 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!"'

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 the 1930s recorded music was sold in plain packaging, or record shop advertising 'bags'; sets of discs were also usually issued in plain albums.

The Kraft paper left marks on the vinyls microgroove of the 33 1/3 rpm LPs when they were stacked.

Steinweiss later went on to develop what is now known as a record jacket.

The first illustrated album cover for 78 rpm records was created by Alex Steinweiss in 1938, while he also developed the paperboard container for 33 1/3 LPs in 1953, which went on to become the industry norm for packaging for more than three decades.

Steinweiss earned a scholarship to the Parsons School of Design, and graduated in 1937.

After graduation Steinweiss impressed Lucian Bernhard, the renowned German poster designer, with his portfolio, Bernhard got him a job in his friend Joseph Binder's studio.

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 1938, Alex Steinweiss was the first art director for Columbia Records, where he introduced a wider application of album covers and cover art.

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

During World War II, Alex Steinweiss served as  Columbia Records' advertising manager before leaving to take up a role at the Navy's Training and Development Center in New York City.

There, he was responsible for creating teaching materials and cautionary posters.

Steinweiss continued to do freelance work for Columbia after the war.

During a lunch meeting with Columbia, the president of the company, Ted Wallerstein, presented Steinweiss with a new innovation that was being prepared to be unveiled by the company: the long-playing record.

Unfortunately, the Kraft paper that was folded to protect the 78 rpm records proved to be too heavy.

Alex Steinweiss was involved in creating album cover designs from 1938 until his semi-retirement in 1973, where he shifted his focus towards painting.

Throughout his career, he designed around 2500 covers, his career can be divided into five different periods:

The first period, from 1938 to around 1945, Steinweiss designed all the covers for Columbia, where he developed the complete visual "language" for album design.

This marked his third design period, in which he employed drawing, lettering, and layout to create brilliant designs, though perhaps not as memorable as his late 1940s work.

It was during this period that he collaborated with Margaret Bourke-White on a memorable series of covers for Columbia.

In the second period, from 1945 to approximately 1950, Steinweiss was no longer the exclusive designer for Columbia, and he started to work with other companies.

This period is occasionally referred to as the "First Golden Age" of the album cover.

The Steinweiss Scrawl, which is now recognized as Alex Steinweiss's signature font, made its initial appearance around 1947.

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.

In approximately 1950, Steinweiss designed the covers and record labels for Remington and established a relationship spanning over 20 years with both Decca and London Records.

During this period, he primarily used drawing as his preferred design technique for clients such as Columbia, RCA, Remington, Decca and London.

From the mid-1950s onwards, Steinweiss incorporated photography into his work.

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 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.