Design heroes: Josef Albers | Jazz record covers | 1959/60

Josef Albers was approached to design the covers for a series of jazz records in what turned out to be one of the artist’s rare graphic design projects. “Josef was deeply influenced by Bach and was fascinated with rhythm. Think about the way that percussion sounds and you realise that the large squares on these covers are almost like kettle drums and the little squares more like hi-hats”, said his commissioning editor. Form, for him, always had to conform to purpose even in graphics.

Albers was a German-born American artist who joined the Weimar and Dessau Bauhaus from 1922 to 1933. He emigrated to the US in 1933 to flee Nazism. He later headed the Yale University design department.

dezeen.com,
albersfoundation.org