The Playful Character of Creative Alphabets. The case of cover art between the 1930s and 1970s

What links Thomas More to Filippo Tom- maso Marinetti? And how is the creativity of alphabets related to the cover art of vinyl records? And yet there is a common thread called lettering, which is variously articulat- ed in the expressiveness of the typographic characters of the artists. There is a bi-pla- narity present in the letters of the alphabet: that of expression and that of content –sig- also an arbitrariness that does not connect, in any way, one to the other, the will of an alphabet to exist as an autonomous form of art. Lettering is perhaps the most appro- priate area of graphics for experimenting, thinking, inventing, narrating and playing with elementary forms. Letters represent an extreme synthesis of the meanings of na- ture and of geometry and suggest unusual alphabets, prompting us to invent new sto- ries. From the artistic avant-gardes of the 20th century, the playful revolution of let- - membered, even more than for their music, for their cover art. The graphic design of the covers, moreover, often offers an intuition, album and the personality of the artist. To- day, the graphic design and the imaginative lettering of record covers have now become recognized as true forms of art.