Fairport Convention – Liege & Lief album art

Published May 12, 2023

Liege & Lief is the fourth album by British folk rock band Fairport Convention, recorded at Sound Techniques studio in London and released in the United Kingdom by Island Records in December 1969 and in the United States by A&M Records in 1970.

Roberta Nicol is credited for the design concept (together with the band) and execution. She has worked on two other Fairport Convention albums, and also made a design for Continental Drifter’s mini album Listen Listen that has a very similar look to Liege & Lief. Diogenic Attempts is credited for the design co-ordination.

Richmond Old Style in its Condensed weight is used for the band name and album title on the front cover of the album.

This album has seen a lot of reissues in various formats (110 different versions according to Discogs). Most of them use the same artwork for the cover, sometimes with color variants. Some cassettes covers have the title and band name written in various typefaces in addition to the original artwork untouched, and one 8-track release only kept the pictures of the band members.

One notable exception is the cassette reissues from 1970 and 1971. These versions’ covers feature only the title of the album and the band name over a pink background. This time, Windsor Elongated is used for the text, with two small details that seem worthy to mention. The lowercase a seems to have been rotated to look straight. The ampersand looks very similar to the original album art and is probably still from Richmond Old Style.

The back cover has been modified numerous times depending on the release date and format, with different degrees of alteration. The typefaces are different from one version to another.

[More info on Discogs]