Interesting hand-illustrated cover originally designed for 1973 release of Birds of Fire.

The whole cover seems to have the look of a transparent watercolor with Primacolor pencil added. If you look closely at the letters, they seemed to have been traced and colored from a source typeface but modified. A model for MAHAVISHNU ORCHESTRA could have been Hobo with lumpy serifs added on the fly.

“Birds of Fire” is also part of the cover painting and has the same feeling of a typeface that was used as a model for loosely copying or tracing.

Remember, this was designed in 1973 or earlier, so the faces may have been loosely traced from press-type or phototypesetting. Both ITC Bookman and Cooper Black had very similar swash characters to the “f” and “r” available in photo headliners.

When you say ’on the fly’ do you mean hand-drawn?

With “on the fly” (an old expression), I meant ’as you go along’ or spur of the moment thinking or creativeness.

Again, these are only guesses of mine, and the source material for the album cover may have been different or just invented. But the similarities to type designs that were prominently available during the early 70s can’t be denied.

But if you are asking if the lettering was hand drawn, my assessment would be yes, but copied and modified from existing type designs.

Hey there all,

Well, you’re gonna get it straight from the horses mouth, I’m just flattered that after all these years there seems to be more interest in my work than way back when. I guess that’s just the way it goes.

There are some very astute observations about how I designed this font, Hobo, Windsor and Bookman were some of the influences. Although, I really tried to put some subtle changes into it. Norbert, yes, Hobo was a strong influence, and the “lumpy serifs” were my principle contribution! Funny, since I always then and now hated Hobo.

This was designed in late 1972 as I recall, I was in the same spiritual movement as John, and actually lived in his home as a renter for about 3 years.

I was a very young designer at the time, about 22, and I was most concerned with designing something that the Mashavishnu brand could own, so that was why I designed it.

Unfortunately, I never finished the whole alphabet, much to my regret, and still would like to finish it today. Although I still have no idea how to use any of the font creation programs, so feel free to chime in.

Coincidentally, this past year I was approached over the internet by Walter Kowlosky, a Boston writer who is putting together a great book on the MO, and I was privilidged to do the cover design for it.

So anyway, if any of you want to discuss this or see what I’m doing now, I can be reached at poissonsaz@qwest.net.

Wow.

I always wondered what Luc de Groot’s “Nebulae” would look like animated, and did something kind of in the same vein with my present website logo. I applied the “noise” filter 40 times, and as it’s random (or more random than most Photoshop filters, IYKWIM), the results are all different, and these comprise the frames, cycled. Being a McLaughlin fan from way back, I spent a lot of time looking at the album covers and listening to the music in vartious mental states, so Chris’ atomism may be responsible for this.

Chris,
so glad you found us and that your work in many ways still lives on. My younger brother played a couple of gigs with John McLaughlin around the time Carlos Santana jammed with John... incredible stuff.

Just goes to show the rest of us that something done well (or with love) is ALWAYS worth remembering.

(Gee, I hope nobody uncovers the oil company logo I developed using a very distressed Stymie Bold.)

Good luck landing the MO book project. Stay in touch, let us know if it happens, or just hang around and reminisce with us older coots.

Hey all,

FWIW, Birds of Fire was a pen drawing, I was into printing at the time as well, so I used 4 Rapidiograph pens with each of the 4-color process colors, cyan, magenta, yellow and black. That’s it. I took me about a month and a half to draw.

Funny story, CBS printed several hundred thousand on them on glossy stock and it looked horrible, John and I went down to their office and told John Berg, the executive art director they were not acceptable, So they did a re-print on a textured matte stock, which looked great. John Berg had a hissy fit when we regected the first batch, he actually kicked the wall!

> I took me about a month and a half to draw.

Wow, incredible. Sort of like painting a mini Seurat.

Or a Pissarro, but in this case, a Poisson!

In fact, the type was actually Poisson Pen Letters. :-o
Sounds a little “fishy” though. ;-)

Oh brother, more of the fish jokes! Hey, how can I paste an image into this page? I’d like comments on the book cover I did.

Hi Chris, I hope you’re on OSX, because you’ll need to download the Flash 8 plug-in. Check the FAQ at the top of the list.

Hey Bald,

I am in OSX but I don’t understand what you mean about Flash. Is that something I need to load a jpeg onto this page? The FAQ link didn’t take me anywhere.

Hey and here’s some interesting news, as I type a complete font of Mahavishnu is being drawn by a typographer named Ray Larabie. It will be used in the Mahavishnu book mentioned above. To think, over 30 years after it was first drawn!

The FAQ link didn’t take me anywhere.

That’s because it’s been changed. My bad. Here’s the new link:

http://typophile.com/readme

Here’s the MO book cover I’m working on if anyone’s interested: