Mondo Grosso logo
Mondo Grosso, an alias for Shinichi Osawa, is a Japanese producer/musician/DJ and has been one of Japan’s greatest electronic producers and DJs of recent. He was part of an acid jazz band started in 1991 and named Mondo Grosso, an Italian word meaning “big world.” In 1995, the band disseminated and Shinichi Osawa took on the alias of Mondo Grosso. In 1997 he produced the album Closer and until the mid 2000s he has produced many albums as Mondo Grosso, but also helped to produce for many influential R&B and Jazz musicians such as Bird and Monday Michiru, Paula Lima, and Amel Larrieux.
From the late 2000s he focused his production and music in the electronic dance, house, electro, and big house scene, and is now regarded as one of the most popular DJs in Japan. He has collaborated with other famous Japanese producers such as Tomoyuki Tanaka (AKA Fantastic Plastic Machine) and Taku Takahashi (one half of M-Flo) to create Ravex, under the Japanese music label Avex Trax.
These sets of album art covers feature his late 1990s/early 2000s phase, which is mostly comprised of jazz, latin jazz, R&B, downtempo, and even 2-step and UK Garage. These are some of the album art covers of his singles, such as Life and Now You Know Better.
Life (Real Eyes/Epic, 2000). Design and Art Direction by Alias. Photography by Jonathan de Villiers
Life back cover
Now You Know Better (Real Eyes/Epic, 2000). Design and Art Direction by Alias. Photography by Jonathan de Villiers
Now You Know Better back cover
Butterfly (Real Eyes/Epic, 2000). Design and Art Direction by Alias. Photography by Jonathan de Villiers
Butterfly back cover
MG4 album (Real Eyes/Epic, 2000/2001). Design and Art Direction by Alias
MG4 back cover (original design)
MG4 back cover – adaptation as used for the UK vinyl release, with Bauer Bodoni
MG4 inner sleeve
Don’t Let Go (Real Eyes/Sony, 2001). Designer unknown
2 Comments on “Mondo Grosso album art”
Most of this is not one of the conventional Bodonis or Didots, but Perla, “a didot in upper case only, but with a set of decorative alternate characters mixing semi-cyrillic and lower case influences.” — Alias
Here it is used in all caps, without its characteristic unicase glyphs, devoid of the ball terminals “in inappropriate places”. Among the few places where its quirkiness still shines through are the numerals and the wide ‘W’. The Mondo Grosso artwork is actually the original use of Perla’s caps. From the Alias blog:
Thanks Florian! Glad to see the guys behind the album cover add some hi-res image!