Ramones – Ramones album art
The iconic record cover for the Ramones’ first album features a photo by Roberta Bayley. The photo on the back cover is by the Ramones’ artistic director Arturo Vega, who very possibly also handled the layout and typography.
In hindsight, Franklin Gothic – which has been referred to as “the blue jeans of typefaces” – could not be much more fitting for this album that has since become one of the most influencial American rock albums of all time.
Set as large as possible for the cover, the tighly-spaced all-caps Franklin was also used as a logo for other Ramones material, including later album covers.
The typeface on the back cover and interior is very similar to L&C Hairline with most of the differences appearing in the lowercase. It may be a modified version of L&C Hairline or another ultra-light phototype-era interpretation of the Kabel.
5 Comments on “Ramones – Ramones album art”
Thank you so much for this. I don’t know how I didn’t know the font used, but the Ramones logo has always been a huge favorite of mine. This made my whole day!
I’ve found the typeface in question. It’s called Slenderella Refined.
Excellent detective work Florian, once again!
Wow! Slenderella!
one thing to note, in the world of digital typography this should be specified that the logo is set in Franklin Gothic ATF 'Heavy,' and not Franklin Gothic ITC 'Heavy’ the biggest difference in caps with between ATF and ITC is found int he M, N, and S, and RAMONES has all 3 letters. if you try to set this logo in the more widespread digital release of ITC it won’t look right. just an FYI.