45 RPM Record Label Designs

The eclectic blog, NoRelevance, has put together a really nice collection of record labels from 7" vinyl records that is in his collection.

(animated gif image created by Spyder)

Here's what the author of this collection wrote:

So much attention has been given to album cover art over the past several years that it has practically been transformed into an actual genre. You can't go into an artsy bookstore without seeing at least a dozen titles on the subject. The clincher has to be that recently, in New York City, there was a celebrated gallery exhibit dedicated to the format.

Being an avid record collector -- and I mean collector in the squirrel sense of the word and not the Sotheby's sense -- I thought I would try to assemble an exhibit of record label art worthy of a Taschen coffee table book. And since the LP format is already grossly documented, I chose the large hole, seven-inch "45" label instead. In this exhibit, I show-off around a hundred or so quirky, interesting, beautiful, absurd, and otherwise notable 45 rpm record labels from my personal collection ranging in date from around 1955 to 1982. Though there are a few famous names here, the focus of this exhibit is on design and typography--not the significance of the artist or song.