Yellow Magic Orchestra – Technodelic album art and Winter poster

Published January 21, 2023
Contributed by Jay Mellor


Source: www.last.fm YMO/Alfa Records. License: All Rights Reserved.




Technodelic is the fifth studio album by Yellow Magic Orchestra, released in November 1981. The album is well known for its minimalist/avant-garde use (in an experimental approach) of loops and digital samples which were not commonly used until the mid to late 1980s.

To pair the photographs of the three band members, the type used for this album is Technodelic, a custom pixellated bitmap font made by Yukimasa Okumura (born 1947), an art director, designer, and founder of Tokyo-based The Studio, which also designed this cover. Technodelic had some digital derivations including one by Madensack in 2000 and an open-source interpretation by Jonathan Maghen of Primary Foundry in 2021 (with rounded corners and a limited A–Z glyph set). It was also used in 1981’s Winter live performance poster and the 1995 album release of that concert.

Yukihiro Takahashi, one of the members of YMO, died on January 11th, 2023, at the age of 70 in Karuizawa, Japan.

[More info on Discogs]




Source: nhkfmsoundstreet.blogspot.com YMO/Alfa Records. License: All Rights Reserved.

Back cover




Source: archive.org Internet Archive. License: All Rights Reserved.

Alternate cover, also seen in reissues of this album (1981–present)




Source: twitter.com YMO/Alfa Records. License: All Rights Reserved.

Poster for their live performance, Winter. It was printed in scarlet red and black inks. The line “TECHNODELIC?” is set in Helvetica Bold Italic, while the font for the Japanese text is unknown.



This post was originally published at Fonts In Use
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