Album covers of Blue Note Records
Many feature a combination of bold colors, experimental typography, and candid photographs of the album's musicians, and have been described as belonging to the Bauhaus and Swiss Style movements.
During this time, artists like Gil Mellé, Paul Bacon, and John Hermansader began designing covers for Blue Note, often featuring pictures by photographer Francis Wolff.
From the mid-1980s through the early 21st century, a number of artists, including Paula Scher, P. R. Brown, and Adam Pendleton, contributed to the cover designs for the label's releases.
The Blue Note album covers, particularly those designed by Miles, have been highly regarded and considered definitive of jazz's visual identity.
[2] Blue Note's first releases were Dixieland "hot" and boogie-woogie-style jazz, and featured acts such as Albert Ammons, Frankie Newton, and J. C.
[5] Following Lion's return in November 1943, the label began to embrace the increasingly popular bebop style of jazz, releasing records from musicians such as Ike Quebec and Thelonious Monk in the mid-1940s.
[6] At almost every Blue Note recording session, Wolff took candid photographs of the musicians as they played, seeking to capture honest and unrehearsed moments.
[7] Though they were taken primarily for personal reasons rather than marketing purposes, the black-and-white photographs were used infrequently in Blue Note advertising material, publicity photos, and on record sleeves.
[8] However, with the growing popularity of 10-inch (25 cm) LP records in the late 1940s and early 1950s came an increased demand for detailed album covers with graphics and information, replacing the plain paper sleeves that were previously common.
[17] He continued designing for Blue Note throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, employing a number of techniques across the covers; on some, he made minimal edits to Wolff's portraits, such as on the cover of John Coltrane's Blue Train (1957), while on others he included photographs of objects, as seen on Hank Mobley's Peckin' Time (1958) and Jackie McLean's Jackie's Bag (1961), which depict a red suitcase and a string-tied file folder, respectively.
[24] In 1963, Miles was hired as the art director of Columbia Records by company president Goddard Lieberson but was still allowed to design for Blue Note.
[28] Simultaneously, additional designers and artists, including Bob Fuentes and Ornette Coleman, began creating covers for Blue Note.
[38] Artist Mati Klarwein designed the cover of Reuben Wilson's Blue Mode (1970), which features artwork from painter Bob Venosa.
[43] These reissues, which included Dexter Gordon's Clubhouse (1979), Art Blakey's Pisces (1980), and Grant Green's Oleo (1980) and Nigeria (1981), featured illustrations, photographs, and designs from Japanese artists such as Toshikazu Tanaka, Akiyoshi Miyashita, K. Abe, and T.
[46] Patrick Roques created several Blue Note covers in the mid-1990s, including those of Hutcherson's Patterns (1995), Mobley's A Slice of the Top (1995), and Wayne Shorter's Et Cetera (1995).
[47] The late 1990s saw Bleu Valdimer of Project Dragon design the cover for Medeski Martin & Wood's Combustication (1998), and P. R. Brown for Jason Moran's Soundtrack to Human Motion (1999).
[53] They are generally characterized by their use of bold colors like ochre, vermilion, and indigo,[54] and visual design techniques and principles such as contrast, negative space, asymmetry, and tinting.
[64] The Blue Note album covers, particularly those designed by Reid Miles, have been described as being definitive of the visual identity of jazz, serving as a symbol of the genre's imagery.
[67] Design writers Steven Heller and Greg D'Onofrio stated in their 2017 book The Moderns that Blue Note's covers were consistently innovative, and commended their ability to accurately convey the spirit of the music.
A project by artist Logan Walters featured the album covers of Wu-Tang Clan reimagined in the Blue Note style.
