George Maas
February 4, 2019
George Maas was a native of Kansas who worked as a Graphic designer & art director at Mercury Records in the 1950s & 60s. He created an impressive number of album covers as you can see below, but I can find little else about him. Apparently he also designed book jackets.
Quite bold and eye catching.
Coulour and texture being two of the attractions, alongside the music of course!
I’ve a feeling he could have turned his hand to textiles quite easily too, as he liked a bit of ornamentation in his work as well as different grades of line and blocks of colour.
Some lovely work and I bet a fair few familiar covers here readers too ?
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Thanks, Craig – that was ace to see! I suppose the art of record cover design sadly began to die when music videos became the most effective way to reach all those teenagers glued to their televisions, watching episodes of MTV in the 80’s. I also remember when CD’s appeared suddenly in the 1990’s, and I really began to miss the big visual statement of record cover design. It could be a brilliant art form.
Of all of George Maas’ superb record covers you’ve shown us, I think the Count Basie cover has got to be my favourite – the architectural details of the building – detailed, yet loose and a bit slapdash at the same time…and the welcoming golden doorway of light of the jazz club, luring us out of the cool blue evening to join the swinging time inside – it really is a masterpiece! The complementary blue with yellow makes the cover sing!
Thanks for shining a light on the talents of George Maas.
Thanks Deirdre for your considered thoughts. The count Basie is a great choice. If you liked that selection you might also like some past posts like this https://wp.me/pY4YW-2tq or any of the Modern Publicity posts I’ve done. There’s another Record cover post in the pipeline too so keep reading : )