CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 11/16/2014

Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires & Riots: California and Graphic Design

Featured image, of Bill Pate and Gene Howard's 1960 "The Swinging Eye!!!!!!!!" album cover for Si Zentner and His Orchestra, is reproduced from Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires & Riots, the first authoritative publication on California graphic design. Author Louise Sandhaus writes of the firm Group Five, which included Pate and Howard, "As Art Chantry, designer and design-critic provocateur, puts it: 'It was either THESES GUYS do your cover, or it was NOT a record cover. ' He says the team produced albums for the Rat Pack (Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop) and affiliated acts such as Nancy Sinatra and Dino, Desi & Billy (Dean Paul Martin, Desi Arnaz Jr., and Billy Hinsche) as well as Latin groups and the Beach Boys. 'They invented so many style genres that they may be the single greatest pop culture innovators of all time.'"