Style combination · Contrasts

Blue Note Jazz Sleeve Modernism × Bossa Nova Sleeve Modernism

The parent: Egeu Laus traces the first bossa-nova covers at Odeon to American jazz sleeves, and Vidal (2008) calls Reid Miles's Blue Note the main source of Elenco's covers too (compare Baden Powell à Vontade with Miles and Andy Warhol's line-drawn guitarist on Blue Note's Kenny Burrell), though Villela and Pereira denied it and blamed the economy on lack of money; Villela is often called the Brazilian Reid Miles. Both run a label's covers as a serial system of one or two inks and treated photographs of the players. Miles fills the square with a tinted, hard-cropped, often full-bleed photograph and flat colour bands, sometimes on black; Villela empties it to white, cuts the figure out and uses red only as a placed beat. Choose Elenco when the sleeve should breathe rather than shout.

From the research on Bossa Nova Sleeve Modernism (César Villela and Elenco)

Mix them and make something Blue Note Jazz Sleeve Modernism Bossa Nova Sleeve Modernism

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Bossa Nova Sleeve Modernism, their arrangement from Bossa Nova Sleeve Modernism, the finish from Blue Note Jazz Sleeve Modernism. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Blue Note Jazz Sleeve Modernism Bossa Nova Sleeve Modernism (César Villela and Elenco)

Type from Blue Note Jazz Sleeve Modernism: Type as image
Grotesque & neo-grotesque
Colour from Blue Note Jazz Sleeve Modernism: Limited spot colours
Flat fields
Form from Bossa Nova Sleeve Modernism: Geometric primitives
Stylised figuration
Composition from Bossa Nova Sleeve Modernism: Dynamic asymmetry
Isolated object
Surface from Blue Note Jazz Sleeve Modernism: Flat

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Blue Note Jazz Sleeve Modernism

Yay!

Archivo, standing in for Trade Gothic and Trade Gothic Extended (Dexter Gordon, Go; Herbie Hancock, Takin' Off; Kenny Burrell, Midnight Blue)

Text · Bossa Nova Sleeve Modernism

The cover language of bossa nova, made in Rio by the self-taught designer César Villela, first at Odeon and then on the first sixteen LPs of Aloysio de Oliveira's label Elenco (from 1963), often around Francisco Pereira's photographs. Calling his method simplificação, Villela pushed photographs of the musicians to stark black and white, cut them out onto an empty white field and set three red dots (four with the one in the Elenco logo) as a syncopated reading path, under a single bold face or cut-paper capitals: two inks, no ornament, no drama.

Bodoni Moda; Bossa Nova Sleeve Modernism used Paper-cut capitals with slanted, uneven edges, heavy and often narrow and Twentieth Century Ultrabold Extended for the title and Neuzeit-Grotesk Fett in lowercase for the artist's name

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Blue Note Jazz Sleeve Modernism, with a counter-accent from Bossa Nova Sleeve Modernism. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Blue Note Jazz Sleeve Modernism Bossa Nova Sleeve Modernism (César Villela and Elenco)

#f3efe2 ground · 36%
#0d0d0d ink · 14%
#e4532a accent · 18%
#d81e1b accent · 14%
#d19a39 accent · 10%
#0b50a1 accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f3efe2;
  --ink: #0d0d0d;
  --accent-1: #e4532a;
  --accent-2: #d81e1b;
  --accent-3: #d19a39;
  --accent-4: #0b50a1;
  --font-display: "Archivo", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Bodoni Moda", serif;
}

Use it with care

Blue Note Jazz Sleeve Modernism: The covers, Wolff's photographs, the Blue Note name and its oval logo are still owned and reissued by the label. Borrow the system (one tint, a hard crop, one giant word), never a particular sleeve, the label's logo or its catalogue-number line, and never present a new design as a Blue Note release. The photographs record named Black musicians at work: photograph or license your own named subject, or crop to an instrument, hands or an object, rather than inventing a generic Black jazz musician as period decor for 'cool'. Do not copy the generic 'tribal' pictograms of Afro-Cuban (1957) as shorthand for music of the African diaspora.

Bossa Nova Sleeve Modernism (César Villela and Elenco): The covers, Francisco Pereira's photographs and the Elenco name and roundel belong to their makers and to the label's catalogue, now distributed by Universal Music: borrow the method (two inks, a cut-out high-contrast figure on white, three or four red dots as rhythm), not a particular sleeve, the Elenco logo or its 'de Aloysio de Oliveira' line, and never present a new design as an Elenco or Odeon release. The photographs show named musicians such as Vinicius de Moraes, Baden Powell and João Gilberto; photograph or license your own named subject rather than lifting their faces.

The two styles

Oversized condensed lettering reads “DEEP HORN” in black and blue on a cream background. A tightly cropped, blue-and-black portrait of a man playing a trumpet fills the right side, with the instrument’s bell extending across the lower foreground.

1956–1967 · North America Blue Note Jazz Sleeve Modernism The record-sleeve language of Blue Note Records, set by art director Reid Miles, who designed some 350 twelve-inch LP covers between about 1956 and 1967, often around Francis Wolff's session photographs. With what Miles called 'one or two colors to work with', he tinted and cropped black-and-white photographs, ran flat bands of colour, and set titles huge in grotesques, slabs and fat faces that are stacked, squeezed, repeated or cut off by the edge. It made mid-century American modernism a serial system of photograph and type for one square format. 1960–1968 · Latin America & Caribbean Bossa Nova Sleeve Modernism (César Villela and Elenco) The cover language of bossa nova, made in Rio by the self-taught designer César Villela, first at Odeon and then on the first sixteen LPs of Aloysio de Oliveira's label Elenco (from 1963), often around Francisco Pereira's photographs. Calling his method simplificação, Villela pushed photographs of the musicians to stark black and white, cut them out onto an empty white field and set three red dots (four with the one in the Elenco logo) as a syncopated reading path, under a single bold face or cut-paper capitals: two inks, no ornament, no drama.