James Gang – Yer’ Album album art
Source: www.flickr.com Uploaded to Flickr by Klaus Hiltscher and tagged with “calendar” and “melior”. License: All Rights Reserved.
Yer’ Album is James Gang’s debut studio album, released in early 1969, on the labels Bluesway, and ABC. Cover design by Henry Epstein, with art by Ladimer Jeric and photography by Bill Szymczyk. The dimensional stencil letters are from Calendar, which was (first?) shown in Photo-Lettering’s Alphabet Yearbook 1969. The title is probably in Melior Graphic, see also this paperback cover.
The image depicts the German release which came out only in 1974, after their second LP Rides Again was so successful.
2 Comments on “James Gang – Yer’ Album album art”
I’m pretty sure Ed Benguiat designed Calendar. Link here.
Thanks, Garrison. It could very well be that Ed Benguiat is the designer of Calendar. After all, someone must have drawn it, and he served as PLINC’s Typographic Director at the time. I’m hesitant to add the credit to our typeface entry without further evidence, though. Photo-Lettering usually added the designer’s surname to the alphabet’s name, like Benguiat Norma, Benguiat Laurent, Benguiat Downsie, etc. If Benguiat really drew it, he apparently didn’t want to take credit for it.
In addition, the article you linked to doesn’t strike me as the most trustworthy. The author confuses PLINC or ITC with ATF and claims that “Ed Benguiat worked a long time at ATF. American Type Founders, the largest supplier of fonts in the United States” and talks about “Benguiat, Herb Lubalin, Tom Carnase and others on the ATF team”. They also describe American Typewriter as a revival by Benguiat, when it’s in fact an original design by Joel Kalden and Tony Stan. By contrast, they characterize Korinna and Souvenir as original designs when they undoubtedly are revivals.
The cover photographs were taken in downtown Kent, Ohio, at the Cuyahoga River dam.