Alex Steinweiss
| Alexander "Alex" Steinweiss | |
|---|---|
Steinweiss in 1947
|
|
| Born |
March 24, 1917 Brooklyn, New York |
| Died | July 17, 2011 (aged 94) Sarasota, Florida |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Artist |
| Known for |
Album cover Jacket for LP records |
Alexander "Alex" Steinweiss (March 24, 1917 – July 17, 2011) was a graphic design artist known for inventing album cover art.
Alex Steinweiss was born on March 24, 1917, in Brooklyn. His father was a women's shoe designer from Warsaw and his mother was a seamstress from Riga, Latvia. They moved to the Lower East Side of Manhattan and eventually settled in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn.
Steinweiss said he was destined to be a commercial artist. In high school he marveled at his classmates who "could take a brush, dip it in some paint and make letters," he recalled. "So I said to myself, 'If some day I could become a good sign painter, that would be terrific!"'
Steinweiss earned a scholarship to the Parsons School of Design.
After graduation Steinweiss worked for three years for the Austrian poster designer , whose flat color and simplified human figures were popular at the time and influenced his own work.
In the 1930s recorded music was sold in plain packaging, or record shop advertising 'bags'; sets of discs were also usually issued in plain albums. However, colored artwork had been used on special albums, from World War I. This was separately printed and pasted onto album covers and occasionally inside the albums: for example, HMV's issue of Liza Lehmann's "In a Persian Garden" and operettas by Edward German and Gilbert & Sullivan were all available by 1918 in such decorated albums. In 1938, Alex Steinweiss was the first art director for Columbia Records, where he introduced a wider application of album covers and cover art. "They were so drab, so unattractive," said Steinweiss, "I convinced the executives to let me design a few."
During World War II, Steinweiss became Columbia Records' advertising manager. He left for a job at the Navy's Training and Development Center in New York City, where he produced teaching materials and cautionary posters. After the war, Steinweiss freelanced for Columbia. During one lunch meeting there, the company's president, Ted Wallerstein, introduced him to an innovation that the company was about to unveil: the long-playing record. But there was a problem. The heavy, folded kraft paper used to protect 78 rpm records left marks on the vinyl microgroove when 33 1/3 rpm LPs were stacked. Steinweiss was asked to develop a jacket for the new format and, with help from his brother-in-law, found a manufacturer willing to invest about $250,000 in equipment. Steinweiss had the original patent for what became the industry packaging standard (he did not develop the inner sleeve, only the outer package), but under his contract with Columbia he had to waive all rights to any inventions made while working there.
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