Kevin Ayers – Banana Productions (The Best of) album art
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.
