In the 1950s, the independent music label Blue Note began issuing modern jazz albums as 12-inch LPs. Unlike 78-rpm discs packaged in brown envelopes, 10- and 12-inch long-playing records required proper covers. That is how the era of sleeve art started, and Reid Miles was one of the pioneers who perfected the format.
Miles’ first record was Milt Jackson and the Thelonious Monk Quintet (also known as BLP 1509). Over the next decade, Miles created a distinctive style for hard bop records, using tinted black-and-white photographs, sans-serif fonts (sometimes printed by letterpress) and a limited palette that, except for black and white, often consisted of a single color. Miles’ major influence came from all the usual suspects: the Bauhaus and the Swiss.
