Alexander Steinweiss (March 24, 1917 – July 17, 2011)[1] was an American graphic design artist known for inventing album cover art.

[2] Born on March 24, 1917, in Brooklyn, Alex Steinweiss was the son of a women's shoe designer from Warsaw and a seamstress from Riga, Latvia.

His parents had first moved to the Lower East Side of Manhattan and later on, settled in the Brighton Beach area of Brooklyn.

He studied under Leon Friend at Abraham Lincoln High School,[3] and his classmates marveled that he "could take a brush, dip it in some paint and make letters," he recalled.

"[7] During World War II, Alex Steinweiss served as  Columbia Records' advertising manager before leaving to take up a role at the Navy's Training and Development Center in New York City.

[4] The first illustrated album cover for 78 rpm records was created by Alex Steinweiss in 1938, while he also developed the paperboard container for 33 1/3 LPs in 1953, which went on to become the industry norm for packaging for more than three decades.

[8] Alex Steinweiss was involved in creating album cover designs from 1938 until his semi-retirement in 1973, where he shifted his focus towards painting.

The design was borrowed from the earlier 78 rpm album cover, MM577, the Mendelssohn violin concerto played by Nathan Milstein.

During this period, he primarily used drawing as his preferred design technique for clients such as Columbia, RCA, Remington, Decca and London.

He utilized strange garish colors, odd lighting, and numerous visual puns and reference points.

[12] He was interviewed for a chapter in Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture (The MIT Press, 2008) edited by Paul D. Miller a.k.a.