The New Generation was a 1970s US studio vocal group. This is the only album they released. It came out in 1973 on the RCA Camden label. Fonts that are used in half of the titles are in Bookman Swash and Uncle Bill. The songs titles are set in a version of Stymie.

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The Muppet Show Book was published in 1978 by Harry N. Abrams, Inc. The book adapts material from the first two seasons of The Muppet Show, with illustrations by Tudor Banus.

The main text font used throughout the book is ITC Souvenir. The characters’ names and initials are each set in a unique font, see the image captions for details. A few minor characters’ names are in ITC Souvenir.

“Introduction” is in the roman style of Bookman Swash. The character-specific fonts are Art Gothic for Kermit the Frog; Sweetheart for Miss Piggy; Yagi Link Double for Sgt. Floyd Pepper; Benguiat Laurent (with Psychemat effect) for Dr. Teeth [edit: rather Bullseye, a copy of PLINC Capricorn, see comments]; ITC Neon for Zoot; Crayonette for Janice; and Shatter for Animal.

Second page of the introduction, ft. Interline for Statler & Waldorf (without the pattern fill in Statler’s case); Scorpio/Hoopla for Fozzie Bear; and Burst Caps for Crazy Harry. The sound effects (“BANG”, “HA HA HA …”) are in caps from Caslon No. 471/540 or similar.

ITC Bookman Demi with swash caps

“THE NEW GO-FER” is in Franklin Gothic Extra Condensed.

An outline version of Cooper Black is used for Scooter and Hobo for George the Janitor.

Reward poster for Kid Fozzie, ft. Figaro

The typeface chosen for Rowlf is Reklameschrift Secession.

Moore Computer features for Kermit’s robot doppelgänger.

“GONZO THE GREAT” uses more of the aforementioned Caslon caps. The character font is Lydia.

Sam the Eagle is presented in a chromatic setting of Stripes Caps.

Cloud Bank for Dr. Julius Strangepork and Countdown for Captain Link Hogthrob

The initial I is from Thunderbird.

The initial S is unidentified.

Microgramma Condensed is used for Nigel

The formal script used for “The Lives and Loves of Gonzo the Great” is Typo Script Extended.

Round Rosie is the font used for Vincent Price’s initials … 

… and Smoke is the one chosen for Uncle Deadly.

Dr. Bunsen Honeydew is set in Gemini.

Filmotype Pixie was spec’d for Hilda.

Another Bookman Swash

Manuscript Capitals for “Bein’ Green”

The P from Mira identifies Koozebanian Phoob.

Chianti is used for Robin.

Kermit the Pig is in an unidentified font similar to Rubens and Duerer.

Playbill is used for J.P. Grosse. On this page, the o’s in Scooter’s name are altered to look like his glasses.

The Berkeley Tribe is possibly the most famous “New Left” newspaper. Centered in Berkeley, California, it (like other publications) focused on revolutionary subject matter (Black/Women's Liberation, Gay rights, Antiwar Movements, etc.). Their headquarters were at multiple times bombed or shot, with the FBI surveilling their operation.

The masthead, like with many famous magazines, such as TIME, is a custom lettering.

Crediting designers for each issue can be tricky, as intimidation from attacks and police prompted staff to remove their names from the masthead. However, East Bay Media is noted to have served the tribe's publishing and at least some graphic design from 1971, the time of this issue here (it is possible other Berkeley area shops filled a similar role during the paper's run, too).

Early covers and hand lettering are credited to designer Gary Grimshaw, who possibly did not work on this particular specimen.

Shown here are the cover and a selection of eleven of the twenty-four pages, featuring most of the display fonts used in the editorial design at least once. Text is set in Univers and Century Schoolbook.

Headlines in Dom Casual (“The Unknown Defendant”) and Clarendon (“Justice We Don’t Expect From You”)

Publicity Gothic (“No Future Rev No Family”) and Clarendon

“Weather Sister Ripped Off At Flicks” is in Roberta.

Headlines in Antikva Margaret (“U.S. Bombs”) and Windsor Elongated (“Thoughts On Being Human”)

Grotesque No. 9 for “SIERRA” and “feedback”

Franklin Gothic for the “Pusherman” headline, De Vinne for “Human Culture Time-Line”

Cooper Black and Haas Inserat Grotesk for “War-Season’s Greetings from JAPAN” . The ad below features two weights of Blippo (equivalent to Burko and Harry) and City.

Profil for “OKINAWA”. The ad for Midnight Films uses Mistral.

More Inserat-Grotesk for “The Sacred Tree is Dead”. Times New Roman is used for the poem at the bottom right.

The “KILL ’EM” headline is set in Windsor. Smoke and Futura feature for the Free Store ad and Helvetica for the one by Sound City.

The “Masturbation” headline is in Jay Gothic. Fonts used in the ads include Flash (“Native Son”) and Commercial Script (“MANDRAKE’S).

This one goes out to John who’s looking for more in-use examples of Daisyland.

For ages 8–80
A good beginner’s book. easy enough for children, appealing enough for adults.
Clear Project Instructions · Knotting Diagrams · Full-Color Photos

On 23 pages, the DIY book presents patterns titled Neat Knots Wallhanging, Wings of String Butterfly, Fish Story, Twice as Nice Plant Hanger, Beaded Beauty Belt, Beach or Books Tote, Jump Ropes, Message Center, Mr. Happy, Ring Around a Towel, and Pretty Hang-up.

Kids Can Macramé was edited and art directed by Mickey Baskett, with photography by Jimmy George and illustrations by Jackie Stephens. Cathy Bonds, Rose Brinkley, Michelle Menough, Carol Millsaps, and Lynn Witbeck are listed as co-authors.

All of the typefaces were available from VGC for the Photo Typositor. Daisyland – an ornamented variant of Erwin by Murray Fuchs – and Jerry Matejka’s Soul were originals by the Florida-based phototype company.

The text on the balloon (“HAPPY BIRTHD”) might be in all-caps Franklin Gothic Wide.

This box set with twelve 7″ records containing a total of fifty party playtime songs was released on Playhour, a sublabel of Pickwick Records, and advertised in 1970. The collage on the cover is by Frank Daniel. The three main display typefaces are all from the catalog of Photo-Lettering: “50” uses numerals from West Barnum, “Party Playtime” is in caps from Caruso Roxy, and the Playhour logo on the back, the inner sleeve and the labels features Gonzales Jeanette.

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Byte magazine, issue #4, December 1975

Bill Godbout was something of a pioneer in the early microcomputer movement of the 1970s, and his firm Bill Godbout Electronics was a commercial vehicle selling discount and surplus electronics and microcomputer components. Bill Godbout Electronics was a regular advertiser in the early issues of the seminal BYTE magazine. Issue #4 is the first Christmas issue and features a 2-pager from Bill Godbout Electronics that mixes a large number of fonts in a style typical of both this era and this advertiser.

“Bill Godbout Electronics” is in Wexford. I think the “CAVE grafix” is lettering, but the first word may be based on Koloss (see further below). “Wish you a joyous holiday season” and so in is in Davida. “If you are into toyful tinkering” and so on is in outlined Cooper Black.

“Son-of-a Cheap Clock” is in Tonight, and above it “We have a successor to our very popular ‘Cheap Clock Kit’!” is in Script (for the IBM Selectric; see also the body fonts, glossed below). The price, $14.50, is in Umbra. Both Script and Umbra are used on the following page.

Windsor is used for “they also make great gifts” (on the curve) and the following text. “Electronic Projects for Musicians” is Reklameschrift Herold. Below the decorative band, “EROM board special offer” is in Helvetica, outlined and with a South shadow.

“4K x 8 pre-programmed for 8080” is in an outline style of a somewhat Microgramma-like font that I couldn’t identify that is also used on the second page.

On the second page, “Bigger & Better” is in Skin & Bones (using two alternates for G, but not for E). “Pace 16 bit chip set” is in Koloss. “1 Pace 16 bit CPU” and other text on and under the curve is the previously mentioned and unidentified outline Microgramma-lookalike.

“Pace Data Packet” is Advertisers Gothic (using the A without a top flag). “4K x 8 RAM kit” is in Umbra. “EROM board kit” is in Rock Opera. The “8K x 8” and so on again is in Wexford. “There’s more ... We have” is in Monogram.

The body text (and some secondary and subtitle text) is typewritten in a variety of fonts, and I did a much better job of identifying those, all available on the IBM Selectric:

On the first page the text for the clock, starting “BIGGER DIGITS” is in Artisan. “By Craig Anderton” (the author of “Electronic Projects for Musicians”) is in Orator (probably, in any case Orator is used on the next page).

The text for the Craig Anderton blurb is Adjutant, I think. Delegate and Adjutant are very similar with only slight differences in weight and thick/thin contrast, but they have different pitches: Adjutant is 12 characters per inch, and is tighter than Delegate at 10. The text block at the bottom of the first page, starting “By special arrangement”, is in Bookface Academic.

On the second page, below “Pace 16 bit”, the text starting “This chip set gets you into PACE” is in Manifold. The word “PACE” itself is in another font (the Selectric had a feature where you could switch type-balls and still retain the cursor position), possibly Pica. Manifold is again used for the bottom paragraph starting “READOUTS, LEDS, TRANSISTORS”. Below “Pace Data Packet”, “Since we started advertising” is Orator. Below “4K x 8 RAM”, “Note the lower price” looks like Prestige Elite.

Below “EROM BOARD”, the text starting “Now you can stuff up to 8K” initially had me stumped, but I think I have tracked it down. The small caps in place of little letters, made me think of Orator, which it isn’t; the o is distinctly squaroid and reminded me of the output of the IBM lineprinters, such as the 1403. It turns out that the IBM Selectric has a typeball called AN3/360 which the 1972 brochure specifically says matches the AN3 style available on IBM’s lineprinters.

At the bottom of the second page, to the right of the wordmark, the payment and terms text starting “YOU MAY PLACE MASTERCHARGE® OR BANKAMERICARD® ORDERS” is in Script.

Ojārs Ābols (1922–1983) was a Latvian avant-garde artist of the 1960s and 1970s whose work reflected the political realities of the Soviet period. His contact with Western art led him away from socialist realism towards abstract modernism, despite being branded a “formalist” during a 1963-64 crackdown on non-conformist art. Until 10 May 2026, the Latvian National Museum of Art is showing a retrospective titled Ojārs Ābols. Cilvēka absurdie projekti uz Zemes / Ojārs Ābols. Man’s Absurd Projects on Earth.

For titles, the design uses Handel Gothic, a geometric typeface of the same era, to evoke both the period and the Modernist aesthetic that defined the artist's output. Text is set in Mulish.

Crystal Eyes Stalk at Midnight album cover

Album and promo art for Sean Wolcott’s 12th album, Crystal Eyes Stalk at Midnight. Macbeth is used as the primary display typeface, along with Harry supporting. Futura can be seen in the Clockwork Records logo, and Eurostile was used for the BGM logo along with the catalogue number.

For the promo posters, a variety of fonts were used including Nuevo Passion (a 2013 digitization of Mecanorma’s Contest), Cooper Black, and ITC Serif Gothic. Akzidenz-Grotesk Condensed is used for body copy throughout the cover and promo posters.

Crystal Eyes Stalk at Midnight vinyl with obi

Crystal Eyes Stalk at Midnight promo poster #1

Crystal Eyes Stalk at Midnight promo poster #2

Crystal Eyes Stalk at Midnight promo poster #3

Crystal Eyes Stalk at Midnight promo poster #4

This anthology of Hispanic American modernist prose was edited by Roberto Yahni and published by Alianza Editorial in 1974.

Cover designer Daniel Gil used Roberta III Initials for the typography. This style of Robert Trogman’s Roberta family is virtually identical to Staudel Xenotype J (1962), but unlike Photo-Lettering’s typeface, it doesn’t have a lowercase. A dry transfer version of Roberta III was available from Mecanorma by 1973.

The chosen cover art is Schwäne in der Abendsonne (“Swans in the Evening Light”), a lithographic design for a stain glass window made by German artist Hans Christiansen (1866–1945) and reproduced in number 33 of Jugend from 1898. As such, it’s a stylistic match for the Art Nouveau-inspired typeface. I fail to see a connection to Hispanic American literature, though.

Detail

A Dense Swarm of Ancient Stars is the third studio album by electronic music duo I Monster from Sheffield, UK. Released in 2009, it “sees the band in their usual mood – playful psychedelic electronic new wave pop.” The cover art was designed by band member Jarrod Gosling, credited under his pseudonym Varrod Goblink.

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CD edition

Vinyl edition

SCELBI Computer Consulting, Inc., was (briefly and significantly) a 1970s microcomputer manufacturer but was mostly known in that era for its technical publications. The cover work for some of the early books features plenty of fun with photo lettering. The company name was often rendered in Koloss, as it is here. Helvetica is the baseline text choice, and Avant Garde Gothic with multiple ligatures is used for the title.

The Galaxy game was a space conquest adventure, in the vein of the classic Star Trek games from early computing. The books (available for the Intel 8008/8080 systems as well as the Motorola 6800) contained the whole game, reproduced as machine language code with explanations for both gameplay and how the program worked.

SCELBAL was a version of BASIC for SCELBI’s own computer system, and the title of its book is set in Baby Arbuckle, a follower of Baby Fat.

The company’s First Book of Computer Games is less aesthetically coherent. It repeats the Helvetica and Koloss, then throws Neil Bold, Pioneer, and Dubbeldik into the mix.

More on the SCELBI computer in the context of early micro computing can be found here, while a number of SCELBI’s books are available at the SCELBI Museum and the Internet Archive.

The New York Philharmonic’s rendition of The Planets under the guidance of Leonard Bernstein was recorded December 7, 1971. The original release came with a cover featuring an illustration of an angel by Christian Piper.

The variant shown here was designed by Ikuo Niida 新居田郁夫, and it’s spectacular. I can make out stylized planets on concentric orbits, but I’m not quite sure what I’m looking at, and what techniques Niida employed – some parts remind me of Max Ernst’s grattages.

The title is set in the open style of Cinema a.k.a. Hollywood, with the lines below added in bold caps from ITC Avant Garde Gothic.

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A better view on the type

A 1996 downtempo/ambient house album by group The Lord’s Garden, formed by Peter Hemsley from Sydney and Craig Sunderland, both previously members of Solstice.

All-caps Handel Gothic labels the group’s name, with all-lowercase Neue Helvetica lightly labeling the album title.

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The Magic of Doris Day is a 1970 album by Doris Day released on Harmony Records. All-lowercase Blippo is used for her name and title with the i being modified with a flower on top. Song titles are set in Futura, arranged at the left and right. No cover designer has been credited.

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Fonts from the Flea Market #1439

Adam & Eve were a – very blonde – schlager music pop duo from Germany. Founded in 1966 by Eva Bartova (1938–1989) and John Christian Dee (1944–2004), the latter was replaced by a new Adam in 1967, Hartmut Schairer (b. 1946). Released in 1972, Wenn die Sonne erwacht (“When the sun awakens”) was their third studio album.

The cover design combines three typefaces that were available from Letraset at the time: Stack by Les Lawrence, Linear by Fred Lambert, and Welt-Antiqua Extra Bold for the ampersand.

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This Christmas compilation featuring ten songs by five of their artists was released by budget label Holiday Records in 1981. With the exception of Eckmann, all display typefaces (printed in red) were available from Letraset, with several of them being originals by the British dry transfer pioneer. Annlie (1966), here used in italic with the alternate swash cap, was conceived by Fred Lambert. Revue (1968) and Octopuss (1970) are both designs by Colin Brignall. University Roman by Mike Daines was added in 1972, and Maurice Schlesinger’s Cut-In Bold by 1973.

The secret star of this album cover is Crafton Gothic, though: the narrow sans used for the titles in green was shown by Photo-Lettering already in 1960, in four weights, without designer credits. The label in their 1971 catalog indicates that Crafton Gothic originated elsewhere, but it doesn’t say where.

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Cowboys to Girls is a 1968 album by Philadelphia soul group The Intruders, released on Gamble Records. The album includes their breakthrough hit title track Cowboys to Girls. The cover design is uncredited. The album title features an early use of Village. The chosen style is Other Village, distinguished by a solid shade to the right.

The band name is in Akzidenz-Grotesk. Text on the back cover appears to be set in the Selectric version of Univers and Courier.

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This rare French 7″ single of “Dancing Days” by English rock band Led Zeppelin was released in 1973, with “Over the Hills and Far Away” as the B-side. The sleeve typography uses Roberta Raised Shadow Regular. The photo is by J. C. Higgins.

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Heartbeat (November 1981) utilises contoured Helvetica and Eurostile Extended for the album title and artist names respectively.

Chris & Cosey, sometimes known as Carter Tutti, are a musical duo formed in 1981, consisting of couple Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti, both previously members of industrial music pioneers Throbbing Gristle. Shown here are the covers of their first four albums, released between 1981 and 1985 on Rough Trade.

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Trance (May 1982), featuring Caslon Antique for the title and artist name, and Melior for the name of their side project at the time, Creative Technology Institute (CTI)

Songs of Love & Lust (January 1984) features Phyllis, alongside University Roman.

Techno Primitive (stylized as Technø Primitive, 1985) keeps things simple; using only Antique Olive in two weights, Black and Nord.

First edition jacket of The Halloween Tree, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1972, with illustrations by Joseph Mugnaini.

It’s not the first time that Orbit was used for a scary topic. This time we get to see its Inline style. What makes Orbit eerie? Is it the claustrophobic proportions? I bet it has to do with its O, which resembles an agonized face – and also, in this context, an elongated jack-o’-lantern.

Secondary text is set in two widths of Univers.