Steve Reich – The Desert Music album art
The Desert Music is a work of music for voices and orchestra composed by the minimalist composer Steve Reich (b. 1936). It is based on texts by William Carlos Williams (1883–1963).
Carin Goldberg provided the art direction and design for the 1985 album release by Nonesuch Records. For the cover, she combined a monochrome photograph by Benno Friedman with Eagle Bold.
This all-caps typeface originated in 1934, designed by Morris Fuller Benton for ATF. It was among Goldberg’s go-to choices: The bold geometric sans with Art Deco overtones appears throughout her work, for example on the cover of a book by poet Raymond Carver from 1987 and later, in the form of David Berlow’s extension, for the Kurt Vonnegut paperback series by Dial Press.
The airily spaced words are arranged in five long justified lines of decreasing size, crossing the hazy sky, slowly floating to the horizon and blending into the desert, where the typography passes on the task of texturizing the surface to the rocks in the foreground. To me, this tranquil cover with its accurate execution is one of the finest works by the great designer from New York.
Carin Goldberg died on January 19, 2023, a few months before her 70th birthday. RIP.
The back cover has a conversation by Steve Reich with Jonathan Cott, set in Futura Light with initials in Eagle Bold. The track listing additionally uses Futura Bold.
The conversation is continued on the inside of the gatefold, followed by notes by the composer. The portraits of Steve Reich and conductor Michael Tilson Thomas are by Deborah Feingold. For their names, Goldberg used a third geometric sans, Metroblack.
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