Charles Magnante and His Orchestra – Romantic Accordion album art
Two years after Roman Accordion, Command Records released another album by Charles Magnante, with a similar title: for Romantic Accordion, art director Charles E. Murphy (1933–2005) did the illustration himself, apparently building on Giusti’s almost abstract accordion from 1963, adding movement, a rose, and a woman’s face.
The title typeface is an early creation by Photo-Lettering, shown in their 1960 catalog as Curfew Initials, with catalog number 0387. The underlying design with the trifurcated stems and decorative tendrils is a century older, though: PLINC’s face is based on an alphabet drawn and engraved by Jules Girault that was reproduced in his Album graphique from 1867.
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The original alphabet by Jules Girault as reproduced in his Album graphique from 1867
While the PLINC adaptation stays fairly close to Girault’s design, apart from a few omitted hairlines, Murphy apparently found it a little too romantic and over the top, and simplified the ornate caps for this application:
— A has one horizontal crossbar instead of two diagonal ones, and omits one tendril at mid stem
— C drops third the tendril in the lower part of the counter
— D and N lack one tendril to the left of the stem and two to the right
— I lacks two tendrils at mid stem
— M lacks two tendrils at the bottom half of the middle stem
— T replaces the round bottom part with a straight stem
Curfew Initials is contrasted with the down-to-earth Akzidenz-Grotesk for the artist’s name.
Detail
