Ray Charles at Philipshalle Düsseldorf concert poster

Some of the ultrageometric, spurless “Bauhaus” faces of the late 1960s and 1970s came with a buckload of alternates, see for example Blippo. Pump was not among those. Bob Newman’s 1970 design for Letraset offered no extra glyphs whatsoever.

That didn’t stop resourceful designers to expand on its repertoire. Günther Kieser built some alternate swash caps himself: he unceremoniously extended the R’s leg by attaching the lower part of an L, and engrafted half an S onto the right arm of the Y. The A and S were created in a similar fashion. The hands-on nature and materiality of rub-down lettering facilitated such repurposing and recombination.

For the pictorial part of the DIN A1 poster (60×84 cm), Kieser opted for a similarly playful approach, and doubled Ray Charles’s trademark sunglasses and his smile by means of photomontage.

“The Genius of Ray Charles Show ’71” by the Ray Charles Orchestra featuring the Raelettes (here spelled Raeletts) was presented by Norman Granz. The concert at the Philipshalle Düsseldorf (today known as Mitsubishi Electric Halle) on September 22, 1971, was the only tour stop in North Rhine-Westfalia. The same poster design was used for the show at Musikhalle Hamburg two days later, as well as for the gigs in Frankfurt (October 16), Geneva (Oct. 23), and probably other locations.