Babe Ruth is an English rock band from Hatfield, Hertfordshire. Initially named Shacklock, it was renamed after the famous baseball player in 1972. The debut album is best known for the song “The Mexican”. It comes with cover art by Roger Dean (b. 1944) who chose to depict a scene of space baseball, with the astronaut players surfing on sharks.

While the UK release featured Cooper Black Italic, with related lettering for the band name, the type was changed for the North American market: there, it’s almost as bonkers as the art, featuring a chromatic setting of Vanderbilt. This style is the shaded variant of Vassar, a top-heavy novelty face added to Filmotype’s library sometime before 1970.

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Detail

Alphabet Fantasque with alternating glyph colors for the cover of a best-of compilation with songs by Kevin Ayers (1944–2013), released in 1989 on Harvest Records.

This “whimsical alphabet” is a sampler of miscellaneous ornamented capitals. Most but not all letterforms have bi- or trifurcated serifs, all but N have a solid south-east shadow. This piece of lettering was reproduced in the first volume of Lettera from 1954, originally without credits. The eighth edition mentions it was “redesigned and completed” by Armin Haab. No historical source is credited. Chances are it was compiled from various 19th-century lettering samplers. Photo-Lettering adopted the design for phototypesetting, and named it Jester Ornamental.

The letter salad is nicely echoed by the image underneath, showing a cross-legged Ayers juggling with all kinds of items that seem to stem from a Victorian-themed book of clip art.

Fun fact: In the Lettera book, the showing of Alphabet Fantasque is directly preceded by Olivia, the typeface used for Ayers’s album Whatevershebringswesing from 1971. Another two page turns brings you to Romantique, a version of which appears on the cover of his solo debut from 1969, Joy Of A Toy.

“Banana Productions” is set in caps from Shimmer Wide, while “The Best Of” uses a medium-wide version of Concave. Cover design by the prolific Phil Smee.

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Whatevershebringswesing is the third solo album by Kevin Ayers, released on Harvest Records.

In 1971, Kevin Ayers started recording what would become his most acclaimed album, Whatevershebringswesing accompanied by members of Gong and his previous backing band The Whole World. Praised by NME, Record Mirror and Rolling Stone, the album realized all the musical aspirations Ayers had harboured since the inception of Soft Machine.

As with most Ayers albums, a collision of disparate styles confronts the listener but in this instance they work to extremely powerful effect. The title track with Mike Oldfield’s guitar accompaniment and Robert Wyatt’s wracked harmonies would become a template for Ayers subsequent ’70s output.

The gatefold cover shows a basket full of eggs, tipped over, with human babies hatching from the eggs. On the back cover, “no eggsplanation” is offered. The sleeve design is credited to “Adrian Boot and unknown artist”. Boot later contributed photography to many other records. It’s not clear whether the Hieronymus Bosch-like painting is an early work of his, or if he used a found painting as the basis for a collage. While the title is set in all-lowercase Clarendon with no wordspaces, the artist’s name features the ever-mysterious Olivia. Designed by Alex Stocker for the first volume of Lettera (1954), the Victorian italic caps were adopted by Mecanorma for dry transfer lettering around the time the album was released.

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Whoever made this adaptation of the cover design for a CD release forgot that type needs to have a certain amount of contrast in regard to the background. This is all the more true for the intricate Olivia.

Released in November 1969, Joy of a Toy is the first solo album by Kevin Ayers. On the LP he is accompanied by his Soft Machine colleagues Robert Wyatt, Mike Ratledge, and Hugh Hopper. The album is named after a Soft Machine track of the same title.

The decorated Tuscan originated in the 19th century. In the 20th century, it went under various names including Carnival, Romantiques No. 2, and Dolphin. Digital options of decent quality include Zebrawood (Adobe, 1994) and Rodeo Clown (FontMesa, 2004, with an added lowercase). Both come with layer styles that can be combined for chromatic effect.

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The track list and credits on the back cover are set in Univers Condensed.

From pinkflag.com:

They may have arrived at the same time as punk and drawn on its initial burst of energy, but Wire’s forward-looking attitude meant they always stood apart from it. In fact, Wire could easily lay claim to having been the very first post-punk band. And yet, it’s equally true to say they could be viewed as part of the British tradition of left-field art-school bands that includes Roxy Music and The Pink Floyd.

The design for this single record, set in all caps Venus, is uncredited, but it could the work of Bruce Gilbert, former art school student and Wire band member, who’s credited for various designs for Wire and other bands.

Printed by Garrod & Lofthouse.

Sleeve design by Roger Waters with artwork by Artful Dodgers. The type is set with one word per line, in all lowercase letters from ITC American Typewriter.

Storm Thorgerson, a founder member of Hipgnosis (designers of most of Pink Floyd's previous artwork), was passed over for the cover design. Instead, Waters created the cover himself, using photographs taken by his brother-in-law, Willie Christie. The front cover shows a Remembrance poppy and four Second World War medal ribbons against the black fabric of the jacket or blazer on which they are worn. From left to right, the medals are the 1939–45 Star, the Africa Star, the Defence Medal, and the Distinguished Flying Cross. — Wikipedia

VHS cover of the video EP with a short film version of the album.

Oopswhoops:

Barclay James Harvest in disguise go Glam on this one, at least on side one, side two sounds like … euh … early BJH and don’t do much for me.

1972 French pressing on Harvest label [with B-side “When The City Sleeps”].

ITC Pioneer was issued by the International Typeface Corporation in 1970. This sleeve is probably an early use of the dry-transfer version by French company Mecanorma, who licensed the typeface in 1972 (UK-based competitor Letraset did so, too, before 1976). The band name is in another shaded typeface, Madeleine Shaded (Mecanorma, 1972), designed by Colin Brignall, then at Graphic Systems. Brignall had previously made the similar Octopuss (1970) for Letraset, and added Octopuss Shaded in 1974 after his return to Letraset.

This single features the Dreamline font. Its ‘5’ is used as an ‘S’.

French version by Pathé Marconi [Discogs], featuring the prism spectrum as seen on the iconic album cover designed by Storm Thorgerson of Hipgnosis and drawn by George Hardie

“Money” is the first of two singles from Pink Floyd’s 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon, and became the band’s first hit in the United States.

German version by EMI Electrola ‎[Discogs]. Photography by Hipgnosis

Multi-instrumentalist Roy Wood was a co-founder of Electric Light Orchestra. His biggest solo hit was Forever. The back cover credits “Rick Price on the Phone.”

This German 45 RPM cover features Roco by Collis Clements.