Ego. The Essence of Alan Watts was published in August 1975 by Celestial Arts in Millbrae, California. Celestial Arts was founded in the early 1960s as a printer of rock posters and became a New Age book publisher, which grew into a respected body, mind and spirit imprint. In 1983, it was acquired by Ten Speed Press. Alan Watts (1915–1973) was a writer, speaker and “philosophical entertainer”.

The cover design features a predominate use of Caslon 471/540 for the masthead. A blue monochromatic photograph by Margo Moore complements the vibrant red orange background.

All interior recto pages feature a monochromatic circular vignette photograph taken by Mike Powers and Maria Demarest. All verso pages are typeset in Palatino.

Family Album is the fourth studio album by Lia Ices, released January 29, 2021 via the Natural label. It was written on Moon Mountain in Sonoma, California on the precipice of motherhood. On Family Album, Ices embraced collectivity and collaboration (the record’s title is apt in a multitude of ways). Part of that is allowing a higher level of collaboration than ever before, part is becoming a mother, part is Sonoma’s Edenic Moon Mountain, part is the Wild West freedom inherent in California, part is an awareness of herself, and, most significantly, of growing ever more into that.

The front cover features a prominent use of Ballast (Ben Kiel, XYZ Type) for the album title masthead. Located in the negative space above the word family, hosts a union of smaller secondary typefaces such as Davida, Neue Helvetica and Special Elite. The lowercase y in the word “Family” was altered slightly to feature a more curious ball and fennel design.

Front cover photo by Renee Friedrich
Back cover photo by Christopher Woodcock
Art direction by Aaron Brown
Designed by John Zabawa

[More info on Discogs]

Romance is the debut photo book by Jean Pierrot. It was self-published by Equator in 2018.

“Romance in its core tries to tells my story of remoteness from everyday life that a romance can be. It's my falling in love, embodied and dissected in a book that is no statement but merely a personal album of memories. It demystifies an intimate process we all unknowingly undertake at least once.” – Jean Pierrot in an interview for Russh magazine.

Layout design by Jean Pierrot.
Back cover artwork and Romance lettering by John Zabawa.
All photographs courtesy of Jean Pierrot.

Another Land is the sophomore album by Lucille Furs. Released by the French record label Requiem Pour Un Twister on March 15, 2019.

[More info on Discogs]

The typography featured on the front and back cover is Salvaje Display by type foundry Copper & Brasses. The credits were made on a 1950s Royal Quiet Deluxe Typewriter. A digital font that comes close is Special Elite ().

Heliotrope is the sophomore album by artist Daniel T, released on September 14 2018 by Cascine, an independent record label based in New York and London. Its focus is on alternative pop music.

The typography featured on the front cover is handmade using rub-down Letraset Helvetica Light 36pt. The back cover is designed with all text produced on an early 1950s Royal Quiet Deluxe Typewriter. Artwork and design by John Zabawa.

[More info on Discogs]

Daniel T. is a Los Angeles-based DJ and producer. A longtime record collector and digger, Daniel has become a local authority on bygone music. He hosts regular radio shows on Dublab (Crosseyed & Painless) and NTS (Heat-Wave) while also throwing a weekly party for Heat-Wave in collaboration with Wyatt Potts at former Hollywood strip club, Gold Diggers. Daniel started making music a decade ago as one-half of Cosmic Kids. Alongside Ron Poznansky, he made a name for himself producing heady house and astral dance tunes and releasing originals and remixes with cult labels Throne of Blood, Let’s Play House, and DFA.

After a handful of releases with Cosmic Kids, Daniel pivoted toward his own project as Daniel T. His solo output is inspired by everything that you might find leafing through his record collection: funk, post-punk, new age, and pop of yesteryear (think: Compass Point All-Stars to Yellow Magic Orchestra). The music he releases as Daniel T. is a reflection of his global taste filtered through his Southern California surroundings.

From the back cover, in the words of Peter Marin:

The Free People is a photo essay about a new generation of young people and the quality of openness and sharing that permeates their life. It is a book about their music, their work, their mobility, what they read and what they buy, their styles, about why they are free people and how they live.

Much has been made of the Woodstock Music Festival. This is not a book about that festival; it is a book about the people who went there.

The book contains photographs by Swedish photographer Anders Holmquist (1933–2008), with an introduction by Peter Marin. The book was first published by Outerbridge & Dienstfrey in the United States of America in 1969.

The colophon includes notes on the fonts in use:

This book, designed by Samuel N. Antupit, has been produced by offset lithography on seventy pound Hopper offset white vellum paper. The title is set in Cooper Highlight, a variation of the Cooper Black issued by American Typefounders in 1921 and named for Oswald Cooper. This typeface is derived from Cooper’s Old Style (designed in 1919 for Barnhart Brothers & Spindler) which bears more than considerable resemblance to Goudy Antique designed by Frederick W. Goudy in the same year. The smaller display matter is set in Linotype’s Pabst Extra Bold Condensed, derived from another design by the prolific Goudy, Pabst Old Style. The text matter is set in ten point Garamond Light Italic, an Intertype version of the French letter cut in 1620 by Jean Jannon. Jannon’s types were acquired by the French National Printing Office where, in the nineteenth century, they were rediscovered, reissued and mistakenly attributed to Claude Garamond, proprietor of the world’s first independent typefoundry.

You can browse through a digitized copy of the book in the Internet Archive.