Zbigniew Seifert – Jazz concert
2025-06-01The Life and Works of Zbigniew Seifert
2025-06-02Rafal Olbinski, a prominent graphic designer and poster artist and author of many popular album covers, was responsible for the graphic design of JAZZ FORUM in the 1970s. The magazine, published for most of that decade as a bimonthly, was published in an unusual, near-square format, resembling vinyl singles covers rather than a typical magazine.
And Olbinski treated JF's covers with similar freedom, taking care not only to laconically advertise the issue's contents, but above all to create interesting, intriguing designs.
Today, it seems unthinkable (although - fortunately - one sometimes finds the brave) that a music magazine cover could contain anything other than a photo of the issue's main character, surrounded by a solid portion of the other names and names discussed on the following pages of the issue. Then - although the cover story usually imposed a certain line of thinking - the cover could run much more strongly into art, abstraction. And Olbinski, like a thoroughbred jazzman, memorably indulged in such graphic improvisations.
Among the fifty covers selected for this publication, three stages of designs can be distinguished. The undersigned was most strongly captivated by the artist's early works, bathed in psychedelic colors, sometimes based on very simple, even symbolic ideas (vide No. 19 of the English edition).
Equally important, however, are the projects from the second half of the decade, when Rafal Olbinski began to put on the covers the heroes of the articles and interviews published in the magazine. However, these were not simple, obvious portraits. Helmut Nadolski was strangling a double bass, Zbigniew Namysłowski was a snake, and Michal Urbaniak was covering the whole of Manhattan on the brim of his hat. The third group of covers, closing the period of Olbinski's cooperation with JF, are already strictly painterly projects, maintained in his characteristic style (whoever remembers Urbaniak's vinyl editions published by Tonpress or the first Czesław Niemen compilation - knows what we are talking about).
The carefully prepared album is complemented by two texts, both in two languages (Polish and English) - a sketch on JF's fifty-year history and a conversation with Rafal Olbinski, in which he reveals the secrets of working in the editorial office and the technical intricacies of creating covers.
JF's laconic history leaves one unsatisfied, and Olbinski's interesting recollections only whet the appetite for more. I believe that the fate of the magazine, inextricably intertwined with the entire Polish jazz movement - viewed from the side of the activists, organizers, popularizers - would make for truly fascinating reading.
Michal Wilczynski
Reviews published in the
1-2/2016 issue of Jazz Forum
