In the 1940s he first studied under the Bahaus designer Lazlo Moholu-Nagy and then with the designer Alexey Brodovitch, who was the art director of Harper's Bazaar. He was a ground-breaking designer who helped turn the album cover into an important form of contemporary art in the 1960s. New ideas at Columbia in the 1960s BOB CATO took over from Neil Fujita in 1960 as art director at Columbia. He created many covers by himself, but also employed freelance designers and photographer such as Burt Goldblatt, William Claxton, Richard Avedon and Ben Shahn. He was inspired of labels like Blue Note and Prestige and added a new, more hard-edged, attitude to Columbia. From mid 1950s Fujita was the art director. He was recruited by Rudolph de Harek, who was Columbia´s art director in the beginning of 1950s.īoth de Harek and Fujita preferred a style which featured photography before illustrations. NEIL FUJITA became one of the post-Steinweiss designers at Columbia who developed the company´s album look. Flora came to produce some of his most oustanding works during the two years he was working for RCA Victor. In 1954 he was hired by Bob Jones who was a former colleague from Columbia, now art director at RCA Victor. His illustrations were influenced by the European modern painters as well as pre-Colombian art, given it a comic book twist. Unlike Steinweiss, a classical-music buff, Jim Flora was a great jazz fan.Īll through the 1940s he devised brightly-coloured covers with caricatural and even naive graphics. JIM FLORA was recruited by Alex Steinweiss to Columbia in 1942 to handle the label's jazz covers. Later he was attracted by the work of abstract artists such as Klee, Kandinsky and Mondrian. His stylized images, with playful typography and eye-catching illustrations, have all the qualities of the great posters from the 1930s. Steinweiss was from beginning inspired by the European poster artists, such as Cassandre, Jean Carlu and Paul Colin. Later he concentrated on graphics for posters, magazine covers and packaging design.
He worked during the 1950s for labels such as Decca, London and Everest. But he continued to be much in demand as an album cover designer, especially for classic music. The LP was a reissue of a 78 album from 1946, which had a nice color cover (see large picture to the right).Īlex Steinweiss left Columbia in the early 1950s. Surprisingly this first LP does not have a pictorial cover, in spite of the fact that such a cover already exists. It seems to be the first pop/jazz LP ever (picture below). His design of thin cardboard, covered with printed paper, soon become the industry standard.Ĭolumbia's first LP in 1948 was "The Voice of Frank Sinatra" which had the catalog number CL 6001. In 1948 Steinweiss also developed the packaging for the new 33 r.p.m. Steinweiss continued to work for Columbia during the 1940s and created many covers for 78 rpm albums. The practice of illustrated albums was soon adapted by the other big American labels. Below his very first cover, a Rodgers & Hart collection from 1939. They looked like tombstones, Alex Steinweiss said. Before that, the albums were sold in plain brown sleeves, with a cardboard outer jacket and just the name of the artist stamped on the front. From the early 1960s the US Columbia albums were labelled as CBS recordings when sold in Europe.ĪLEX STEINWEISS created the first illustrated cover for an album of 78 rpm records. Albums from Columbia in England, and other countries, will be find on the pages for European labels.ĭuring the 1950s, Columbia´s US recordings were distributed in Europe on the Philips label. It is the albums from the American Columbia that are displayed on this page. In the late 1930s the American Columbia Records was sold to CBS, Columbia Broadcasting System.
Later, in the 1930s, the English Columbia formed EMI and was forced to sell its American operations back to the US. The label's first jazz recording were made by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1917.Ĭolumbia was an American company until mid 1920s, when it was purchased by its own former subsidiary in England, the English Columbia. He becomes the man who invented the album cover.Ĭolumbia is the oldest surviving trademark in the record business, dating back to 1880s. In 1939 the company employed Alex Steinweiss as art director. Of record album cover design COLUMBIA pioneered in many fields of the recording business.