David Bowie – Aladdin Sane album art
Rémy Peignot’s Cristal (Deberny & Peignot, 1953) with a blue-white-red gradient, in use of the cover of Aladdin Sane. The sixth studio album by David Bowie was released on 13 April 1973 by RCA Records. From Wikipedia:
The album cover features a shirtless Bowie with red hair and a red-and-blue lightning bolt splitting his face in two while a teardrop runs down his collarbone. It was shot in January 1973 by Brian Duffy in his north London studio. […] In an effort to ensure RCA promoted the album extensively, [manager] Tony Defries was determined to make the cover as costly as possible. He insisted on an unprecedented seven-colour system, rather than the usual four. The image was the most expensive cover art ever made at the time. The make-up designer for the shoot was artist Pierre Laroche, who remained Bowie’s make-up artist for the remainder of the 1973 tour and the Pin Ups cover shoot.
Design by Celia Philo.
8 Comments on “David Bowie – Aladdin Sane album art”
That SIL digital interpretation of Cristal is from 2007 by George Williams.
Wow. Even for a 1990s freebie (Crystal was originally made in 1998), that’s abysmal quality.
Hello,
A digitalization of Cristal was indeed carried out under the name Palace (a pun by is creator on the English edifice Crystal Palace?).
Without any date or credit reference, the drawing of the letters is quite correct.
The character index is common to many fonts created quickly in the 1990s but since dispersed without further details: the punctuation and diacritics are poorly harmonized (with mathematical and Greek symbols with a “neutral” outline, as well as a silhouetted Apple logo).
In view of which, concerning the above “interpretation”, it is a safe bet that it was made by degrading this source file in the most horrible way.
Otherwise, the flame added to the I of the album title, in reference to Aladdin’s lamp (… or the Palace?) – too much.
Martier, can you point us to a website where this Palace font is shown?
Hello Florian,
She is there: [link redacted]
The copy I have has no reference (as I indicated) but it is identical to this one, Brendel version.
This is the reason why I’m looking for links between B&P, Brendel, Panache, ICG…, and many “old” fonts which appear to be outside any catalog.
Thank you, Martier! I had to remove the link, as that website not only hosts fonts that can be considered abandonware like this one, but also fonts that still are being sold by the IP holders.
To me, it looks like Brendel’s Palace (1994) as well as Crinoline by NovelFonts (also 1994) built upon OPTI Crystal, Castcraft’s digitization dated 1990–1991. The glyph design is the same, including for such that weren’t part of predigital versions (for example, accented letters and generic symbols like +=<>@).
The OPTI digitization in turn appears to be based on VGC’s phototype version, see this 1973 specimen: it has the same design for glyphs like %&£$¢, which weren’t included in (what I believe to be) Deberny & Peignot’s original glyph set.
And yes, George Williams’s OFL-licensed Crystal apparently was built on the Castcraft digitization or one of its derivatives, too.
Hello,
Aaaah, the path is winding, but I’m starting to understand.
So OPTI-Castcraft launched into digital technology in 1990 by reproducing fonts from film photos—hence OPTI, as indicated on Luc Devroye’s website (remarkable, thank you for your contribution and the links).
In fact, the original Cristal (OPTI-Crystal) was drawned in Type-1. This is normal since it was the first technology to appear.
But after, between 1990 and 1994, the Palace/Brendel version (whatever the name) was transformed into TrueType (it’s only need to compare them to see that it’s an exact copy).
Regarding what is written on the Devroye website, even more than the complaints that can be made about OPTI-Castcraft’s production methods, it must be recognized that the stakes have increased tenfold since the advent of digital technology itself: drawing digital type by copying analog sources seems to me to be far more serious than simply duplicating digital files.
Of course, the problem remains regarding the original design and copyright.