Frl. Menke – Frl. Menke album art and single covers
Cover for “Hohe Berge” b/w “Du musst mein Zufall sein”
Frl. Menke – short for Fräulein Menke (“Miss Menke“) – is the stage name of Franzi Menke. Born in Hamburg in 1960, the singer came to fame in 1982, when her NDW single “Hohe Berge” entered the German Top Ten. It has sold more than 2.5 million copies to date.
The modular capitals used on the cover also adorned the sleeve of her second single from that year, “Traumboy”, as well as that of the self-titled debut LP, Frl. Menke. Their exact origin and designer is unknown to me. The display typeface with letterforms crudely constructed from little bricks was shown by Typeshop as Helicopter already in 1973, without credit, and with a glyph set that only included capital letters. Chances are that this amateur design was exclusive to the German phototypesetting chain.
In 2017, Estonian designer Ott Metusala made a digitization. His Hohe Berge is named after Frl. Menke’s 1982 hit single. See the revival in use for a book published in 2022.
Cover for “Traumboy” b/w “Ich sitz immer am Fenster”, with art by Wolfgang Joop
Glyph set (A–Z, no numerals) of Helicopter as included in a Typeshop catalog
Front cover of the self-titled LP, with the same cover art as “Traumboy”. “Selbstverständlich mit Hohe Berge” is added in Helvetica breit mager.
Back cover of the self-titled LP. The track list features more Helicopter.
Front cover of a later pressing, “now with 3 top hits”
Back cover of a later pressing with added runtimes and a publishing credit for Edition Joe Menke, the singer’s father
