Yellow Magic Orchestra – Technodelic album art and Winter poster
Technodelic is the fifth studio album by Yellow Magic Orchestra, released in November 1981. The album is well known for its minimalist/avant-garde use (in an experimental approach) of loops and digital samples which were not commonly used until the mid to late 1980s.
To pair the photographs of the three band members, the type used for this album is Technodelic, a custom pixellated bitmap font made by Yukimasa Okumura (born 1947), an art director, designer, and founder of Tokyo-based The Studio, which also designed this cover. Technodelic had some digital derivations including one by Madensack in 2000 and an open-source interpretation by Jonathan Maghen of Primary Foundry in 2021 (with rounded corners and a limited A–Z glyph set). It was also used in 1981’s Winter live performance poster and the 1995 album release of that concert.
Yukihiro Takahashi, one of the members of YMO, died on January 11th, 2023, at the age of 70 in Karuizawa, Japan.
Back cover
Alternate cover, also seen in reissues of this album (1981–present)
Poster for their live performance, Winter. It was printed in scarlet red and black inks. The line “TECHNODELIC?” is set in Helvetica Bold Italic, while the font for the Japanese text is unknown.
5 Comments on “Yellow Magic Orchestra – Technodelic album art and Winter poster”
Thank you, Jay. Where did you come across the 2000 date for Madensack’s digitization? All I could find is that it was made before 2009.
Hi, when I fired up Windows Explorer on my PC, I realized there are two different years this font Madensack as expected as shown above: one is from November 24, 2000…
And the other from June 29, 2010. How does it look btw?
I see. Thank you, Jay!
By looking for another HQ picture of the flyer, it seems that the unidentified Japanese text is set in an oldstyle variant of Ishii Mincho (bold weight) for the venue name, and Ishii Gothic (medium weight) for the venue details.
Both typefaces are one of the most commonly used typefaces back in Showa era Japan.
Kudos! Added.