Johnny & Orquesta Rodrigues – “Hey Mal Yo” / “Johannesburg” Belgian single cover
When you don’t have any ideas for your sleeve design and no budget for photography, you can always throw together some fancy display fonts. The uncredited designer of this Belgian single cover got away with such a somewhat uninspired approach. On the upside, they picked two interesting typefaces that haven’t seen a lot of use, both of French origin:
Tzigane by Albert Boton is a stand-alone italic with vertical contrast, in the tradition of Enric Crous-Vidal’s Paris. Mecanorma released it in 1973, with a number of alternates and ligatures, some of which were used here. The title of the B-side is in the lowercase-only Hypnos, an amorphous design with tiny circular counters, drawn by Jean Alessandrini in 1969 and issued by Hollenstein. Mecanorma adopted it in late 1973. The mix is completed with classic Brush Script, here set on an angle and with added contour (and questionable capitalization).
Record collector oopswhoops comments:
Unbearable A-side and a cool instrumental on reverse.
1974 Belgian pressing on EMI label.
See also the German cover for this single.
