![]() In 2000 he was the subject of the art book For the Record: The Life and Work of Alex Steinweiss. In 1974 Steinweiss and his wife moved to Sarasota, Florida, where he entered semi-retirement, although he continued painting and designing posters for community and cultural events. By the early '70s he fully embraced new developments in mass production to produce covers in die-cut designs and collages. Over time Steinweiss expanded his creative palette via photographic covers known for their garish colors, eccentric lighting, and visual puns. He soon began an association with Decca and London that extended across two decades, and across the decade to come he continued refining his craft, even collaborating with photographer Margaret Bourke-White on a series of sleeves for Columbia. Beginning in 1950 Steinweiss began freelancing for the jazz and classical imprint Remington Records. Steinweiss' basic design - a cardboard cover, folded at the spine - quickly emerged as the de facto industry standard, remaining essentially the same for decades but for minor tweaks and improvements. He nevertheless retained close ties to Columbia, and in 1948 the label hired him to supervise the sleeves for its first 33 1/3-rpm LP releases. Following World War II he left Columbia to work as a freelance designer and consultant, working in a series of industries. Navy's Tactical Air Direction Center, creating cautionary posters and displays. Concurrent with his Columbia duties Steinweiss served as an exhibits engineer with the U.S. The position of art director was filled by his protégé, Jim Flora, an album art pioneer in his own right. Steinweiss' prolific output first slowed in 1943, when he was promoted to Columbia's advertising manager. In all, Steinweiss illustrated more than 2,500 record covers - most immediately recognizable is his work on the original Broadway cast recording of Rodgers & Hammerstein's South Pacific, a cover that survived incarnations from LP to cassette to CD without change. ![]() Beginning with a collection of Rodgers & Hart stage hits, he drew on inspirations culled from French and German poster design to feature the composers' names spelled out in lights on a theater marquee - the approach quickly proved a hit with consumers, and across the hundreds of releases to follow, the artist honed a signature style all his own, characterized by geometric patterns, folk art abstraction, and an inimitable hand-drawn lettering approach soon dubbed the Steinweiss Scrawl. ![]() Where previously 78-rpm records were released in plain, simple pasteboard packages similar to photo albums, complete with basic layouts and fonts, Steinweiss proposed introducing original paintings and drawings more illustrative of the music within. After a two-year stint as assistant to Austrian-born graphic design pioneer Joseph Binder, in 1939 Steinweiss was named art director of the fledgling Columbia label. At 17, Steinweiss made his professional debut contributing illustration work to PM Magazine, and at 20 he graduated from New York City's renowned Parsons School of Design. Born March 24, 1917, in Brooklyn, Steinweiss attended Abraham Lincoln High School alongside future design innovators Gene Federico, Seymour Chwast, and William Taubin, collectively dubbed "the Art Squad" by visual arts teacher Leon Friend. During his storied stint as Columbia Records' art director, Alex Steinweiss transformed the packaging and presentation of recorded music, pioneering the LP cover and developing a graphic language that designers still employ to this day.
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