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Highlife Record Sleeve

ProMax

A highlife jacket was printed cheap and fast: two or three plates, no half-tones, one heavy black key line doing all the drawing. The band gets painted into a flood of hot orange or process yellow, and the title is knocked out of the ink in the fattest slab the shop owns.

Everything here comes off that press. The page is grey-olive jacket board, not paper. Colour arrives as whole untrimmed fields. Plates land a hair off register, and that misalignment is kept, because it is what makes the thing look printed rather than rendered.

Learn more about the Highlife Record Sleeve style

  • OriginAccra and Kumasi, Ghana, West Africa
  • Period1950s–1970s (blank brown jackets from the 1920s; full illustration by the 50s–70s)
  • DesignerFrancis Kwakye · Dick Essilfie-Bondzie · A. K. Yeboah (Akwaboa) · K. Frimpong
  • MovementsHighlife (palm-wine and dance-band strains) · West African commercial screen and offset printing

Web examples

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Slide examples

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