I was planning on doing some kind of jazz weekend special in the near future, but since I started researching for it, I began digging up so much great material that it soon became clear to me I would never be able to fit it al in one weekend.
So no weekend special.
Instead you’ll be seeing jazz-related posts popping up every now and then, but let me get one thing clear from the start: I like jazz immensely, but I am by no means a big expert on the subject. In fact, I’m quite a late convert and I’m sure there’s a lot of stuff I still need to discover. Which is great, of course.
One of the nice things about jazz is undoubtedly that this music more often than not is accompanied by great visuals: photographs, record covers, typography and illustrations, jazz seems to bring out the most stylish designers.
Today we focus on the work of an illustrator who made a name for himself doing jazz record covers. He is probably one of the best known, and most collected, illustrators doing this sort of work: David Stone Martin.
There are over 400 covers he did illustrations for, mainly for the Clef, Norgran and Verve label and commissioned by his long time friend, record producer Norman Granz. His favorite tool was the crow quill pen as will be apparent when you look through the selection of work below.
And may I suggest you put on a little music while you’re at it?
There are of course plenty more cover illustrations by David Stone Martin to be found on the net. Try looking at the places where these came from: The Birka Jazz archive, Like Wow! Vinyl Collector Quarterly, LP Cover Lover and the Fox Music Flickr set. Also check out Leif Peng’s wonderful blog Today's Inspiration where there are several articles on Martin.
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