Hugh Mundell – Africa Must Be Free by 1983 album art

Africa Must Be Free by 1983 is the debut album by Jamaican teenage prodigy Hugh Mundell, who recorded it at the age of 16. It was released in 1978 on Message, the label of Augustus Pablo. The cover design by Hugh Roy McIntosh and Courtney Jackson uses a photograph by D.Ellis, framed by the silhouette of the African continent, with red gold and green borders.

For the typography, the designers paired Profil and the solid style of Japanesque. These two typefaces were both available for dry transfer lettering from Formatt at the time, the latter under the alias of Broker.

By 1983, the talented musician sadly was dead: Mundell was shot  on 14 October that year. He was merely 21 years. You can read more about his seminal album in Lawrence Burney’s 2024 article for Pitchfork.