COVER ART

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 919, 22 March 1957, Page 4

COVER ART

NOT so long ago "cover art" simply meant -flossy pictures -almost invariably (and sometimes excessively) feminine. But with the arrival of the long-playing disc and high-fidelity recording, cover art has come to mean something better-something that no longer requires inverted commas *

[EMERSON once said that if a man made a better mousetrap than his neighbour, the world would make a beaten path to his door. Nowadays, unless the mousetrap is properly packaged, the world is not likely to diverge from the broad road of the established market. And the importance of "cover art’"-of the package-applies even to such merchandise as gramophone recordings. Once these arrived in plain clothes, trusting only to their contents, and only the most expensive sets were in glamorous outfits. Even the first long-playing records arrived in overalls primarily designed to protect the expensive and vulnerable surface. Working from the plain clothes of the past, most of the companies chose a design and used-it for all their records. But with the rapid growth of a competitive market, . anything that would help sell a record was of value. Just as the book industry had developed the use of attractive dust jackets, so. the recording companies ‘began to concentrate on more and more striking covers. Designing for this field is a new art, and the styles are varied. Some companies, like Deutsche Grammophon,

have kept a sober, plain style for their classical recordings, depending upon the quality of work and artists to sell them. Other companies added pictures of artists or composers to help distinguish one record from another, but such presentation was often uninspired. With the advent of jazz and light "mood" music on LPs, the whole style of covers began to change to something more exciting. The emphasis is now on colour, and the more brilliant and unusual the combination, the better. (Black and white reproduction on these pages can suggest only design, and hardly does justice to the beauty of colour and the skill in the original conception and its reproduction.) ; Variety in cover style is important, though some companies have used simi-

lar styles for a_ series. Argo have some fine black and white photographs, Vox have some witty versions of medieval woodcuts for their older music, and Decca. have covered their Gilbert and Sullivan recordings with a series. of Victoriana. Some of the opera discs, notably the Russion ones, owe something to stained. glass, and other artists have produced designs of gaiety and wit in flat colour and line drawings, while some covers are abstrace

tions. The most sensational covers are usually on jazz records, whose artists are depicted in ecstatic action, of "mood" music, where lush and romantic scenes woo the buyers, Toulouse-Lautrec long ago proved that good design can be good advertising, and the art in "commercial art" is more and more recognised today. The Graphis International Advertising Art Award, for example, now has a Record Album Division, which last year was won by Bob Irwin’s abstract painting of a trumpet, for a recording of Chet Baker. In both England and America, artists are signing their covers with pride, and already Burt Goldblatt has made a name for his atmospheric photographs and montages for jazz record covers. One new series, The Grand Award, claims to present "The World’s Greatest Music-The World’s Greatest Art," with a_ series of specially commissioned paintings. The lettering is kept to the frame, so that the owners may use the cover pictures, although there is no alternative cover to protect the record. LP covers, in fact, are big business, and when The Listener called on Harold Isaacs and Fred Smith, of the Wellington office of H.M.V., Mr Isaacs quickly explained why. "What we want in a cover," he said, "is brightness and a striking design to entice the customer to handle the record. After that the record must sell itself. We print all our covers in New Zealand now, which saves months of delivery time. We try to use the American designs as much as possible, for they are generally more exciting, but we do use English ‘covers and some Australian ones, too. When we cannot get copyright of overseas covers, we have new ones designed here, and, of course, we need special covers for recordings made in New Zealand." "We get a sample cover," Mr. Smith explained, "and make lithographic plates or letterpress blocks from that. The actual printing is done in different centres, and the flat covers come to Wellington for folding and pasting. All our new covers have the title, recording artist and serial number on the spine, and a curved cut-out on the lower fold, which helps take the weight of the record. This makes the covers harder

to paste, and we in New Zealand have had to design a new machine to cope with the varying thicknesses at the sides. This machine can paste just on 7000 covers a day, and we hope to raise that output. "For our covers, we import over 100 tons of special clay-coated board a year. This board has the coating on each side to protect the records, since it is clean and smooth, with no fluff, And in addition the records are put in polythene or glassine bags." The earliest LP covers were simple sleeves; later the discs were put in polythene bags or glassine envelopes for extra protection. Some companies use a double sleeve, and others an envelope binding, but all cater for the demand for the best protection available. Sets used to be put out in identical but unattached covers. Now they are often put in plain covers in-an attractive box, or bound in an album. Even the small 71-inch discs are being sold in pairs in linked covers. The backs of the covers have always had some informiation, and often some pictures. And the more important vocal records have had booklets with the words, whether of opera or musical comedy. These books are becoming progressively larger and more elaborate, and some new American -ecords, even single discs of light music, are magnificently bound and illustrated. One magazine for jazz enthusiasts demands a high standard of information, and their reviewers downgrade any record which does not have adequate information on the cover about the performers, the time and place of recording, and the history of the music. There is constant pressure to improve these extra services, and the companies cannot resist it and keep up their sales. Dorle Soria, of Angel Records, said in an article in Theatre Arts that his company is dressing their operas to bring the illusion of actual performance as far into the home as possible. The packaged opera has a cover, and a libretto, with texts in the original language and a precise non-singing translation. There is also a detailed synopsis of the plot, with analyses of the opera as musical and literary work. These are done by prominent critics or, where possible, by the

composer or author himself. Les Mamelles de Tiresias has an introduction by Poulenc, Gian-Carlo Menotti wrote comments for Amelia al Ballo, and the libretto of Cavalleria Rusticana contains D. H. Lawrence’s translation of the original Sicilian story by Giovanni Verga which inspired Mascagni’s opera. Libretti for the Angel Company are enlivened with a wealth of pictures, drawings, and pertinent information from which the listener can form mental images of the performance. These may include reproductions of original coiffure and costume designs, photographs of the artists, excerpts from letters about the opera by the composer, and reproductions of the manuscript. Operas which take special significance from their locale may be accompanied by booklets up to 48. pages long, which describe the country in essays, photographs and maps. Sometimes it is possible to illustrate the actual scene of an opera, and this was done for Tosca, along with the designer’s sketches for the opera setting. But with all this other material, unfortunately not yet available here, we must not forget the cover, and Angel covers are planned to have a definite artistic merit, while reflecting the character of the work. These may be anything from drawings by Picasso and Cocteau (for Les Mamelles de Tiresias), to

a design based on a 17th century faience plate, for Falla’s El Retablo de Maese Pedro, and an old Indian print for Les Pecheurs de Perles. From a retailer’s viéwpoint, these attractive covers are wonderful. "There is no doubt," said Roy Hill, "that these bright covers do help sell the records. The shops are so much more attractive now that we can put up a colourful display. In fact, many new shops are planned and old ones altered to display these records. This may help to explain the terrific boom in LP sales. "Many more people come into the brighter shops to browse through the covers than ever came in to handle the old dull covers, which attracted only the enthusiast. Those who come ‘to browse in this way often end up by buying something that has caught their eye. It is a tremendous help, too, to be able to locate a record quickly, simply by its cover picture." So it would seem that a good cover does for a record what a pretty dress does for a girl. The connoisseur, whether of the classical or the modern style, will look at the cover but consider other qualities; by the less dedicated, the plainer covers are often unnoticed. But the recording companies are doing their best to see that no record goes unnoticed.