Eric Robertson – Piano Hits/Magic Melodies album art
Front cover of the Silver Eagle Records pressing
Eric Nathan Robertson (born in 1948 in Scotland) is an award-winning composer, organist, pianist, and record producer who is currently living in Canada. His work spans many composed film scores and music for television series in both Canada and the United States.
This album was released both under the titles Piano Hits and Magic Melodies, first by Silver Eagle Records in 1982 and subsequently also by K-tel. The back of some K-tel releases credits the cover design to Paul Weldon, a Toronto musician, architect and graphic designer whose works spanned over 30 years, including the cover of Funkadelic’s America Eats Its Young. It’s a typographical party.
Stilla by François Boltana is used for the artist’s name. The track names are shown in Times New Roman (“Chariots of Fire”, “One Golden Pond”, “Endless Love”); a modified Eckmann-Schrift with swashes on t and e (“The Rose”); Letraset’s Bookman Bold Condensed, a condensed width of Bookman Bold Swash AKA “Sixties Bookman” (“Musicbox Dancer”); Graphis AKA Barnyard Extra Bold (“The Homecoming”); Slogan (“American Gigolo”) Cooper Black with italics on numerals (“9 to 5”); and a rotated line of Kalligraphia (“Fame”), with ITC Avant Garde Gothic for the small text.
The K-tel version shown further below uses Gallia on the back.
Back cover of the Silver Eagle Records pressing
Glyph set for Bookman Bold Condensed with Italic as seen in a 1988 Letraset catalogue (copyright metadata for this reads “© 1980 Esselte Letraset Ltd.”) – notice there are some slight differences in some glyphs.
K-tel pressing, 1983
Back cover of the K-tel pressing
3 Comments on “Eric Robertson – Piano Hits/Magic Melodies album art”
“Stilla by François Lasgi” ? Shouldn’t it be “by François Boltana” ?
Thanks, Stéphane! Of course it’s Boltana. Jay got him mixed up with the designer of Puff Wind. Corrected now.
Thank you, Jay! Following your suggestion, Bookman Bold Condensed now has a distinct typeface page on Fonts In Use. In Faces from Letraset, Mike Daines credits the adaptation to Rita Major. A Letraset original, it is basically a narrowed version of Bookman Bold AKA “Sixties Bookman”, and likewise comes in roman and italic styles, with the same swash alternates. Unlike phototype, you can’t squoosh dry transfer lettering. So when Letraset wanted to offer a narrower width, they had to produce it as a separate typeface.
In Letraset’s 1983/84 catalog, Bookman Bold Condensed is shown next to the regular-wide styles. Those are credited to Miller & Richard which, as Mark Simonson put it (pdf), “stretching the truth a bit. Miller & Richard did produce a face around 1858, a precursor to Bookman Oldstyle, called Antique Old Style No. 7. Designed by A.C. Phemister, it was a heavy variation
of a face called “Old Style.” Phemister and Miller & Richard had nothing to do with the name Bookman, nor with the swashy version of unclear origin that emerged in the mid 1960s.
Bookman Bold (dubbed “Sixties Bookman” by Mark Simonson) and Bookman Bold Condensed, a narrower version created by Rita Major for Letraset in 1980, both in roman and italic styles
G. W. Ovink investigated where Old Style Antique came from in his 1971 article Nineteenth-century reactions against the didone type model. He concluded that both Miller & Richard in Edinburgh and McKellar, Smiths & Jordan in Philadelphia introduced bold versions of Phemister’s Old Style around 1869, both using the same name of Old Style Antique, but different letterforms. Various foundries then cast these types and some also cut extra own sizes. ATF’s Old Style Antique (later Bookman) in its early forms contained a mixture of both original types in different sizes. (We now might call Old Style Antique as Old Style Bold, or Old Style Slab-serif, I guess.)
It’s therefore unlikely Phemister cut Old Style Antique, he emigrated to the USA in 1861 and worked in New York and Boston. I’m not aware of what information there is on punchcutters for Miller & Richard or MS&J. There are various other references to Old Style Antique in American printing literature of the late c19/early c20, but I’ve only seen most of them in Google Books snippet view. I quote some in the Wikipedia article. One said that the name reminded him of a joke about a man who ordered café au lait with milk.