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Vinyl version, front cover

In July 2016, Australian electronic group the Avalanches released their second album, Wildflower.

While the front cover has no type at all, except for a sticker with Jersey M54 for the band name, all-caps Arnold Böcklin for the album title, and ITC Franklin Gothic for additional text, the typographic party takes place on the back: it features a different style for each track on the album, with embroidered letterforms. Most of the song names are based on fonts, with or without modifications.

Source: www.ebay.com TRACKNINE22. License: All Rights Reserved.

Vinyl version, back cover

The Leaves Were Falling: Brush Script
Because I’m Me: handwriting?
Frankie Sinatra: Benguiat Caslon (or a digital version thereof, like Emfatick NF)
Subways: Arial Bold
Going Home: Gillies Gothic
If I Was A Folkstar: West Barnum
Colours: Electric Circus
Zap!: (similar to) Strand Midnite
The Noisy Eater: Baby Teeth
Wildflower: Arnold Böcklin
Harmony: Tango
Live A Lifetime Love: Allura
Park Music: ITC Avant Garde Gothic (?)
Livin’ Underwater (Is Somethin’ Wild): loosely based on Williamson Skidoo (?) and an unidentified script
The Wozard of Iz: Pretorian and Futura
Over the Turnstiles: Motter Femina and Turnpike or similar
Sunshine: Broadway
Light Up: lettering?
Kaleidoscopic Lovers: Commercial Script
Stepkids: Kabel Black
Saturday Night Inside Out: Druk Condensed or similar?

The headings for the sides of the vinyl version are in Windsor Extra Bold Condensed.

The art direction is credited to Chris Hopkins at Lost Art and band member Robbie Chater. Hopkins also provided design and illustration, the latter together with Emi Ueoka. Fergadelic (Fergus Purcell) did the butterfly logo. Kris Vierra took care of quilting and textiles.

[More info on Discogs]

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CD version, front cover

Source: www.ebay.com rowerecords. License: All Rights Reserved.

CD version, back cover

Source: www.discogs.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Inner sleeve with more octagonal caps

Source: www.discogs.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Inner sleeve ft. a naïve sans and script lettering based on Kalligraphia

Source: www.discogs.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Inner sleeve with more Baby Teeth and lettering similar to Williamson Skidoo. The Biz Markie photo is by David Corio.

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Sheet with five promo stickers

Source: lost-art.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Vinyl record label

Electric Circus is an iconic typeface designed by the famous New York studio, Brownjohn, Chermayfeff & Geismar for the legendary Electric Circus nightclub. A few months ago, Fonts In Use contributor Quinn Davis noted that the typeface was likely based on Anzeigen-Grotesk / Neue Aurora IX. This makes a lot of sense, as Anzeigen or Aurora was used as a secondary face on this (uncredited) concert program, and on many other designs by the firm.

Performing at the 1968 Electric Easter concert were electronic music pioneer, Morton Subotnick; a light show by Anthony Martin and Jerry Brandt; Medieval and Renaissance ensemble, New York Pro Musica; and psychedelic soul band, The Chambers Brothers.

LP front artwork with “dark” inner sleeve visible through die-cut almond shape and the vinyl label visible through the inner sleeve “middle hole”

In January 2020 — a few weeks before the pandemic came — Max, bass player of Tausend Augen (“1000 eyes”), approached me and asked me if I would like to design the artwork for their debut album Westend. It rarely happens that a band has a specific typeface in mind when it comes to their records, but Tausend Augen did: It turned out they all loved Klaus Schulze’s Irrlicht album, and from day one it was clear that the “Irrlicht font”, as they called Electric Circus, originally designed by Brownjohn, Chermayeff & Geismar around 1960, had to be the typeface for their debut album.

As there is no digital version of Electric Circus available, I started digitizing it myself. Our version with the working title Electric Eyes was made specifically for this project, with some adjustments in the details, and will not be released to the public.

It wasn’t easy to source proper references. In fact, the alphabet overview in New Alphabets A to Z (Herbert Spencer & Colin Forbes, 1974) that Stephen discovered was the best I could find. In this reference, the letters are slightly distorted, but I got the idea and the large “R” helped a lot with the details. I started with the letters we needed to set the Tausend Augen band name, and then I added the rest of the uppercase alphabet and some basic punctuation. The numbers I found especially tricky, because I had no references for them.

In comparison to the original, I changed a few details (but not too many), mainly to harmonize the alphabet, and decided to add a version with slightly rounded corners. Those I noticed first in the large R in A to Z, and I thought they would look great in large display uses.

Through die-cuts, the album artwork plays with visual perception in a modular way and comes with alternate inner sleeve and vinyl label options. Depending on assembly, each LP looks different. Without inner sleeve or record, the LP cover alone turns into a blank template for any eye possible (at least ‘a thousand’). The vinyls originally came in silver, turquoise and pink colors. A green option was added in the 2021 repress.

To celebrate the album release, a microsite was launched. Tausendaugen.org runs on Persona, a personal site builder, and uses their signature WebGL filters to push the static distortion of Electric Circus into dynamic, mouse-reactive movement.

Electric Eyes, our own version of Electric Circus

LP back artwork with alternate vinyl label visible through die-cut circle

LP cover, “dark” inner sleeve and turquoise colored vinyl

LP cover, “light” inner sleeve and silver colored vinyl

LP animation

LP front detail: cover with die-cuts and without inner sleeve or record

CD digipack version

The Tausend Augen website

The Tausend Augen website

The Tausend Augen website

A use of the Brownjohn, Chermayeff & Geismar custom lettering for this debut album from Circus Maximus on Vanguard Records. While not specifically credited on the album, Jules Halfant was the art director for the label from 1953 to 1988. The photograph is by Joel Brodsky.

The typeface is named for the East Village nightclub that booked various acts—the most noted being The Velvet Underground—in order to create multi-media events. According to liner notes from a compilation release by Craft Recordings:

First operating as The Lost Sea Dreamers (thereby providing a useful acronym for the times), (Circus Maximus) signed to Vanguard on the heels of a residency at the city's fashionable Electric Circus —Alec Palao, compilation producer and liner note author

The band featured in the Electric Circus’ December “Electric Christmas” concerts at Carnegie Hall (see poster) as well, so it makes sense that they would not have had any trouble adopting this face for their debut album which was released in autumn of 1967.

[More info on Discogs]

Artwork for a 10″ record that Salt Cathedral put out in 2019 featuring dub legend Lee “Scratch” Perry.

Keeping in mind the characteristic use of reverberation and strong bass lines in dub music, the graphic concept was based on the idea of visually representing “vibrations”. The letters were illustrated based on the custom typeface Electric Circus, designed by the famed studio Brownjohn, Chermayfeff & Geismar in 1960. All the elements form a sound system.

Ohr Records OMM 556 022, Germany 1972

Irrlicht / Quadraphonische Symphonie für Orchester und E-Maschinen is Klaus Schulze’s debut album. On the record sleeve, he is credited for “Music, production, recording, cover, photography, text etc.”

Wikipedia:

In 2005, Schulze said, “Irrlicht still has more connections to Musique concrète than with today’s electronics. I still never owned a synthesiser at the time.” Schulze mainly used a broken and modified electric organ, a recording of a classical orchestra rehearsal played backward, and a damaged amplifier to filter and alter sounds that he mixed on tape into a three-movement symphony.

Back cover of the PDU release. “Platten Durcharbeitung Ultraphone” is an “Italian label based in Switzerland that in the 1970s imported the sound of the German Cosmic Couriers on the Italian market”. — Discogs

Inside

Text on the inside of the front cover is set in Churchward Design 70 and Data 70. Both fonts are rounded by adding some weight.

Record label on the B side, showing two Kosmische Kuriere set in Ringlet. on the back of the record sleeve, the Kuriere are translated to English as “Cosmic Couriers” and “Cosmic Couriers Production”.

The record label on the A side uses a mix of different sans serif typefaces for information in a more classic look than the rest of the album, including Semplicità Nera (for “Klaus Schulze” — the asymmetrical ‘U’ is the giveaway) and Cairoli, Nebiolo’s version of the German grotesque series best known as Aurora-Grotesk. As the record was produced in Italy, Mr. Schulze was probably not involved in the design of this label, and the record manufacturer simply used what was common, and at hand. The labels of the original release on Ohr show a human ear — “macht auf das [Ohr]” (“open up the ear”), in tightly spaced Helvetica.

23×23 inches. Part of the circus alphabet series of posters printed in 1968. The main type is Chermayeff & Geismar’s experimental typeface made famous just the year before in their work for The Electric Circus nightclub in New York. And perhaps the text is actually a fragment of an Electric Circus flyer since many of the elements in Corita’s work are samples from existing prints.

The complete circus alphabet series.

Designed in 1958, according to robertbrownjohn.com. Art direction by Charles E. Murphy. Released in 1962, according to Discogs. Read more about this custom typeface by Brownjohn, Chermayeff & Geismar in the Electric Circus use.

Public Collectors:

From a review by The Horn Book Magazine on the back cover: “… So intense is the conflict, so satanic the power of ‘grass’ and ‘acid’ that the drama seems to proceed on two levels: the desperate struggle of Jim to save Kevin’s soul and sanity, and the universal war between good and evil.”

The ‘N’ is either an alternate or, more likely, a modification to make the psychedelic Electus a little less ambiguous. ‘T’ and ‘E’ appear to be edited for greater legibility and balance as well.

Edit: Scratch that. With that ‘E’, this is probably Electric Circus itself.

The Electric Circus was a nightclub and discotheque located at 19–25 St. Marks Place between Second and Third Avenues in the East Village neighborhood of New York City, from June 1967 to September 1971.

As far as I can tell, this experimental typeface was developed by Chermayeff & Geismar [update: later confirmed by the firm on Twitter]. In a way, it presages the photocopier distortion that became common in the 1970s–90s. I don’t yet know the typeface’s name, and perhaps it was exclusive to C&G. The cover for Lou Reed’s Transformer album used a very similar face, which is fitting since The Velvet Underground was a fixture at The Electric Circus. Digital fonts in this genre include Double Vision (clearly inspired by this film font) and Alphabat.

Read more about this type style in a post by Art Chantry about a 1962 album cover, which I assumed to be its first use, until finding C&G’s 1960 ad for Transitron. The concept may have begun with That New York, an experimental typography booklet produced at The Composing Room.