Stevie Wonder – Stevie Wonder’s Greatest Hits Vol. 2 album art
Contributed by Bryson Stohr on Jul 29th, 2022. Artwork published in
October 1971
.
Front cover, US pressing, 1971
Three and a half years after his first best-of compilation, Stevie Wonder released a second volume of greatest hits on October 21, 1971. Art direction by Curtis McNair, with graphic supervision by Tom Schlesinger.
This album cover has a relatively vast number of rare and unusual fonts from the phototype era of typography.
Front cover, UK pressing (STML 11196), Jan. 1972
Back cover, UK pressing (STML 11196), Jan. 1972
4 Comments on “Stevie Wonder – Stevie Wonder’s Greatest Hits Vol. 2 album art”
Thank you, Bryson – and congrats! You’ve found a Use with numerous rare film typefaces by Lettergraphics.
Earlier in 1971, McNair and Schlesinger designed the cover for Marvin Gaye’s album What’s Going On. For that job, they already used Tedesca (here seen for “My Cherie Amour“), which was available from Lettergraphics as Edesca. I checked their catalogs and was able to add the missing IDs, several of which didn’t have an entry in our database yet. All of the featured faces seem to have been carried by this phototype provider from Culver City, California.
The images you provided show a slightly later pressing (January 1972) from the UK. I’ve added an image of the original US pressing at the top, as the British version is slightly different: apart from the scripty Tamla Motown logo, it also replaces “Travelin’ Man” (in Avanti Caps) with “Don’t Know Why I Love You” (in Concordia – just like “Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday”). Not sure what’s going on with the R’s in Windsor Bold Condensed. “You Met Your Match” has the standard form, but “Never Had a Dream Come True” appears to feature a different, high-waisted one.
It just is that alternate glyph for the letter R into Windsor Elongated – this could be the phototypesetting era!
This is most definitely from the phototypesetting era, and typeset with phototype fonts.
The specific style is Windsor Bold Condensed – not Windsor Elongated, which is even narrower. While Windsor Elongated has a separate entry on Fonts In Use because it’s so extreme and also quite frequent, the other condensed styles are covered by the general family entry for Windsor.
The original foundry version included a Condensed. The Encyclopedia of Phototype Styles from 1978 shows a Heavy Condensed (by VGC?) and a largely identical Bold Condensed (by Facsimile Fonts?) next to a slightly heavier Extra Bold Condensed as well as a Black Condensed and a Windsor Chip Special. The latter is also listed by Lettergraphics as Son of Windsor. I haven’t seen an alternate R listed for any of these interpretations. The Extra Bold Condensed is included in the digital Windsor families by URW, Monotype, and Elsner+Flake.
VGC carried this face as Windsor Heavy Condensed (catalogue no. TW-20).