An independent archive of typography.
Topics
Formats
Typefaces

Crash by J.G. Ballard (Pinnacle Edition, 1974)

Contributed by Florian Hardwig on Aug 17th, 2013. Artwork published in .
Crash by J.G. Ballard (Pinnacle Edition, 1974) 1
Source: brownthatbanana.typepad.com License: All Rights Reserved.

This is a weird mix: It looks like Blippo with the C and R from Pump and the A from ITC Bauhaus. Did Blippo come with all these alternates or is this a custom blend?

Crash by J.G. Ballard (Pinnacle Edition, 1974) 2
Source: intramuros.es License: All Rights Reserved.

Typefaces

  • Burko
  • Helvetica

Formats

Topics

In Sets

4 Comments on “Crash by J.G. Ballard (Pinnacle Edition, 1974)”

  1. It’s not Blippo or Bauhaus, but an old Lettering Inc face called Burko. Fun fact: It also had swash characters.

  2. Mark Simonson to the rescue! Excellent, thank you. I see that Burko (or Ad Burko) came in numerous styles, including Super Duper, Gorpo and Shady, but also Circle. Treacyfaces digitized several of them. You don’t happen to have a date and designer for Burko, do you?

    According to Joe Taylor, he is “the designer of a typeface called ‘Blippo Black’ (1969)”. Taylor claims that Blippo Black was named by his boss [at Fotostar], Robert Trogman. The design was “a black version of Burko Bold, which came from the unpublished Bauhaus face of the thirties”. (By the latter, he refers to the bold letters of Herbert Bayer’s Universal-Alfabet from 1926.) Several sources including Identifont take over this claim and credit Taylor as the designer of Blippo. Luc Devroye questions this and ascribes Blippo to Bob Trogman himself (with a 1970 date).

    If this source can be trusted and Blippo really is modelled after Burko, then Burko is not so much a clone than an influential precursor, no? Most of the typefaces from this genre that are still popular today came later, including Pump, Ronda (1970), Horatio (1971), Wexford (1972) and Bauhaus (1975). Harry is from 1966, but it is not as similar as Blippo or Pump.

  3. Bob Trogman confirmed per e-mail that Blippo Bold indeed was designed by Joe Taylor for Facsimile Fonts and FotoStar International, and that the design was based on Burko.

  4. I found the creator of the Burko series. It was designed by David L. Burke from Chicago. See the Burko typeface page.

Post a comment