He was born in Chicago in 1927, grew up in California and moved to New York in the early 1950’s. Miles joined Blue Note Records in 1955 and went on to design some 500 covers over a 30 year career. He often worked with one of the owners, Francis Wolff, who photographed all the recording sessions. Miles worked with Wolff’s images and one or two colours to create covers that became the look of 50’s and 60’s jazz. You find yourself wondering if his covers were created for the music, or the music created for his covers.
Interestingly, he didn’t much care for jazz, preferring classical music. It is extraordinary to consider how his control of image, type, colour and composition became the most expressive face of an era of jazz without him having any emotional attachment to the music itself. Maybe his detachment enabled him to stand back and consider how jazz fitted into the Modern Age rather than overlaying his interpretation of how he thought it should be – the mark of a good designer.