Black Sabbath – Master of Reality album art
Scanned by Nick Sherman. License: All Rights Reserved.
Master of Reality is the third studio album by Black Sabbath, released in the United Kingdom on 6 August 1971 by Vertigo Records.
The first pressings came with a poster featuring a photo of the band, taken by Keef (not depicted here). The album’s title is shown embossed, with the black-on-black lettering only visible in relief. Later editions would drop the costly embossing in favor of the album title printed in gray.
The letterforms were distorted to resemble a fluttering flag. They are taken from Lodwick Kabel, a weight extension of Rudolf Koch’s Kabel that’s bolder than Kabel Black (1929) and also ITC Kabel Ultra (1975). London-based typesetting studio Photoscript showed it as “Exclusive Royalty face” in their 1970 catalog. See the Blog post for more details.
Scanned by Nick Sherman. License: All Rights Reserved.
Master of Reality was the first album to include printed lyrics. They are set in Gill Sans, with caps from a bold weight for the titles. At least on the shown US pressing by Warner Records, the credits block uses News Gothic.
Source: www.ebay.com ircarr (edited). License: All Rights Reserved.
In this photo, the raised title lettering becomes a tad more visible: the protective foil accentuates the contours.
This post was originally published at Fonts In Use