The record album, when it was invented by George Avakian in the 1940s, was literally an album of 4 or 5 78 RPM singles. Avakian, an employee of Columbia Records, came upon the idea as a way of mining Columbia’s archives for reissues. Alex Steinweiss, another young Columbia staffer, became the first record cover designer. His simple and memorable graphics for Columbia and other labels over the next decades have been compiled into a grand volume to be issued next month by Taschen. If you don’t have $500 to spare for the book you can browse through all 422 pages here.
Tags: 78 RPM record albums, Alex Steinweiss, Columbia Records, George Avakian, record cover design
