orchestra21

Vinyl and design fans know about the adventurous covers that accompanied 1950s and 60s recordings from the American classical music label Westminster Records, but lately I’ve been seeing postings of them here on Tumblr that don’t cite their designers. [Perhaps the new content attribution feature will take care of that.] The very best of these modernist record jackets, including the one pictured above, were created by the unjustly overlooked American designer Rudolph de Harak. His covers are graphically bold and visually arresting, predating as they do Westminster’s sale to ABC-Paramount and subsequent shift in focus from strikingly packaged and sonically groundbreaking recordings to re-releases marketed with somewhat more frivolous cover designs.