Thelonious Monk Quartet – Monk’s Dream album art
Contributed by Noah Bromberg on Jul 5th, 2021. Artwork published in
March 1963
.
Released in 1963, Thelonious Monk's first album for Columbia Records features all-caps Jessen-Schrift for the artist’s name and album title and Palatino for the tracklist. On the back cover, liner notes and tracklist are written in Optima.
While the album art designer is unknown, the photo used was taken by Columbia photographer Don Hunstein.
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Palatino and Optima are both typeface designs by Hermann Zapf, of course., while Jessen-Schrift was designed by Rudolf Koch. Both Koch and Zapf were born in Nuremberg. At the age of 16 or 17, Zapf’s interest in letterforms was aroused after having seen an exhibition commemorating Rudolf Koch at Nuremberg’s Norishalle in 1935 – Koch had died in April 1934. In 1938, Zapf moved to Frankfurt to work at Haus zum Fürsteneck, the printing workshop run by Koch’s son Paul.