Wang Laboratories was a renowned Massachusetts (USA) manufacturer of desktop computing and word processing technology through the 1970s and 1980s. Founded by Dr. An Wang in 1951, the company started out in typesetting and calculator equipment before becoming more successful and well-known for office computing equipment.

The Wang System 2200 was a series of desktop minicomputers with a built-in BASIC language, introduced in the early 1970s before the advent of popular microcomputing. The printed documentation for this line of systems employed a couple different design languages, but the style shown here with this typography was in consistent use through at least 1977’s PCS-II. 

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Letterhead by José de Ros

Josep de Ros was an industrialist from Figueres, Spain, born in the manor house of Les Olives into an aristocratic family. Around 1917, he started a business in the fertilizer sector and opened the Camponal liquor distillery a few years later. He had a warehouse on Vilallonga Avenue in Figueres, near the railway station, close to the border with France. He died in 1935.

In the shown letterheads by Josep/José de Ros from around 1930, the difference between typography and lettering is difficult to appreciate (thanks to the staff of Fonts In Use for the clarifications).

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Detail of the letterhead: “José de Ros / Abonos, cereales y despojos / Figueras”. All three styles are lettering.

The name is in an English script close to Stempel’s Künstler-Schreibschrift, known in Spanish as Inglesa Artista semi-negra, with an ornamented J and a characteristic loop around the stem of the R. Josep de Ros i Moner (father) and Josep de Ros i Reig (son) were descendents of Ros de Olano. In Stempel’s 1918 specimen book for the Spanish market, the name of Ros de Olano is set in Inglesa Artista (it’s misspelled as “Olona”; another page in the same book has the correct spelling).

“Figueras” is drawn in a serif with inline. The structure is very close to the Bravour typeface designed by Martin Jacoby-Boy for Stempel in 1912), but with sharper serifs, and a wider letter U with a small spur. I have made a comparison with the solid Bravour negra and the decorated Bravour adornado (Verzierte Bravour).

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Comparison of the lettered inline caps to the Bravour typeface

From the obituary for the father in La Veu de l’Empordá, 27 December 1919 (translated):

[…] Josep de Ros was from a noble family, from the stately house of Ros located in the town of Les Olives, although the one they owned in this city could also be considered a manor. Among the ancestors of the house are the famous General Ros de Olano, who was a minister of the Crown and commanded an army corps in the African War during the years 1859 and 1860. The last Prior of the Monastery of Santa Maria de Ripoll also came from the Ros family.

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Detail of the letterhead featuring Merveille, Kleukens, and Venus, all by Bauer/Neufville

The Camponal letterhead is typographic: it’s set in the typefaces Merveille, Kleukens-Kursiv and Venus-Grotesk, all by the Bauer type foundry (Merveille originated in the United States under the name Laclede), and distributed in Spain by the Neufville branch in Barcelona. Bauer’s typefaces were the most commonly used ones in Catalonia before the Franco dictatorship (1939). This letterhead helped to locate the forgotten Camponal distillery.

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Label featuring Venus schmal dreiviertelfett, Fette Grotesk-Kursiv, and Clio a.k.a. Kleopatra

The Camponal identity uses other typefaces by Bauer and Neufville, like Antigua Mercedes (the Spanish name of Tages-Antiqua), Bernhard-Antiqua, Fette Grotesk-Kursiv, Carnaby (Marocco), Grotesca Estrecha (Neue enge Zeitungs-Grotesk), Florentiner Mediaeval, and Majestic.

A few typefaces could have been sourced from different type foundries based in Madrid and Valencia, like Clio (Ludwig Wagner, 1903) distributed by Neufville/Bauer as Kleopatra and by Gans as Aurora; or Aurora Grotesk (Wagner & Schmidt, 1908) sold by Gans as Grotesca Ideal and by Fundición Tipográfica Nacional as Grotesca Estrecha.

Typography and lettering also coexist in other elements, such as in the Camponal liquour labels and packaging.

Learn more about Josep de Ros and the Camponal distillery.

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Camponal label featuring lettering (white letters), Kleukens-Antiqua, and Majestic

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Label featuring Kleukens-Antiqua, Venus, and an unidentified typeface (similar to Stempel’s Holzhausen-Antiqua, but with a different M)

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Bottle label ft. lettering, an unidentified grotesk for “Licor de Hierbas ‘Camponal’” (similar to Grotesca Favorita by Gans), and Bauer’s Kleopatra

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Packaging ft. lettering (the reversed letters at the top), Marocco a.k.a. Carnaby for “Cura estómago e intestinos”, Majestic for “G. Garriga”, and other unidentified typefaces

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Camponal ad ft. Bernhard-Antiqua, Universitäts-Antiqua a.k.a Druckhaus-Antiqua, Neue enge Zeitungs-Grotesk, Tages-Antiqua a.k.a. Antigua Mercedes, and others

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Point-of-sale display ft. Columbus, a version of Edel-Grotesk (probably Groteska Moderna by Fundición Tipográfica Nacional), and Schmale halbfette Etienne

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Camponal ad ft. Bernhard-Antiqua, Tages-Antiqua a.k.a. Antigua Mercedes, Universitäts-Antiqua, Florentiner Mediaeval, Kleukens-Antiqua, and an unidentified grotesk

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Address label ft. Etienne Sombreada (Gans’s version of Umstochene Etienne by Schelter & Giesecke), Venus, and Antigua Veneciana (Gans’s version of ATF’s Cheltenham)

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FC Lourdais is a French rugby union club from Lourdes in Hautes-Pyrénées, formed in 1911. This honorary membership card for Monsieur Laurent Cami for the season 1926/1927 depicts the club’s name in a typeface that originated under the name Ancient Gothic.

Designed by William W. Jackson for the Keystone in Philadelphia, Ancient Gothic was patented March 17, 1891. The all-caps design features letters with open top and solid bottom halves. On the card, it was overprinted in red in a solid style, for a two-color effect. The same design was offered in Germany (by Krebs as Allegro) and in Italy (by Augusta as Beatrice). Some version also found its way to southwestern France.

The sticker by the Fédération Française de Rugby (F.F.R.) features the bold condensed style of Cheltenham. The years at the top are in some Clarendon variety. “Membre honoraire” is in inclined caps from a typeface with tiny serifs. It’s a version of Copperplate Gothic, possibly FTF’s Antiques Litho No. 4. The other typefaces are yet unidentified.

In August 1942, the Second World War was in full swing and Wehrmacht troops were approaching Stalingrad. At home in the German Empire – in Nuremberg, the city that previously hosted the Nazi Party rallies – the population was offered distraction and entertainment in the form of “true-to-nature geography and ethnology”.

Each week, the Kaiser-Panorama (est. 1888) in the Mauthalle presented a different virtual journey. This time, visitors could view stereoscopic glass slides depicting fifty three-dimensional scenes from the Republic of Peru in South America, from the Pichu-Puchu [sic!] to a herd of llamas. Students and DAF members paid a reduced entry fee; soldiers, children, seniors and disabled persons even less.

The typography of the leaflet combines blackletter and non-blackletter typefaces. There are two sans serifs, the bold rounded Block and the wide Industria, both from before the First World War. The price information at the bottom is set in an Art Nouveau roman that’s even older, Schelter-Antiqua halbfett from 1906. The two blackletter typefaces are the youngest designs: the dates are shown in Straßburg, released in 1926, and the list of scenes in Thannhaeuser-Fraktur, first cast in 1938.

Stade Saint-Maixentais was a rugby club from Saint-Maixent in the department of Deux-Sèvres in western France. This honorary membership card for Monsieur Defaye, the club’s treasurer general, is part of a calendar issued for the 1923/1924 season. It carries the rubber stamp signature of the club’s president, Charles Teneau, who ran a local hosiery factory.

The wide typeface used in all caps at the top is Fantasques Larges by Deberny & Cie. In 1923, the foundry merged with Peignot & Fils into Deberny & Peignot who continued the design. Fantasques Larges didn’t originate in France, though, but rather at Stephenson Blake in England. There, it was first cast in 1890 and sold under the name Flemish Expanded.

Smaller text is set in Cheltenham. Designed in New York City, this typeface was available in France at the time from Fonderie Caslon. The italic is used with some of its swash caps.

The incredible story of the Maine Yankee who discovered the world’s richest half mile of gold in Canada, and the strange and tragic end that befell him.

Geoffrey Bocca’s account of the Oakes case was first published in 1959 by Doubleday, as The Life and Death of Sir Harry Oakes. The cover of Greywood’s paperback edition from 1970 features Fred Lambert’s Sans Stencil for the title.

Source: gallica.bnf.fr License: All Rights Reserved.

Issue 6, April 25, 1928

French weekly magazine Vu was the brainchild of Lucien Vogel (1886–1954). It was first published on March 21, 1928, with a logo designed by Cassandre. 637 more issues followed until May 29, 1940. Vu is best known for pioneering photojournalism, featuring works by contributing photographers such as Cartier-Bresson, Man Ray, Brassaï, Robert Capa, and André Kertész.

From the very start, it included a section titled “Les distractions de la semaine” (“The week’s distractions”) with various puzzles, or problèmes. Initially, the crosswords came with handwritten numbers, see this example from issue 5. In the sixth issue from April 25, 1928, Vu introduced solutions for the crosswords. These no longer used lettering. Instead, they were composed from a special font. Simply named Mots Croisés (French for “crosswords”), it offered blank and black squares as well as such with capital letters for clues and solutions, internal and external numbers, and border elements. Mots Croisés is shown in Deberny & Peignot’s Spécimen Générale from around 1936.

Last month, Poem released Phông, a digital typeface inspired by crossword puzzles. It was created by Khải Quang Nguyễn during his research residency at Atelier National de Recherche Typographique. While his primary inspiration were the puzzles in Phong-Hóa, a Vietnamese satirical journal first published in 1932, he also looked into Vu – which led me to Mots Croisés. Cảm ơn, Khải!

Source: gallica.bnf.fr License: All Rights Reserved.

Detail from issue 21, August 8, 1928

The other fonts in use for “Les distractions de la semaine” are worth a look, too. While the dancing fat face with the checkered fill used for the title is lettering, the thin caps for “Résultats” in the first image are typographic: they come from the generically named Antique Fine. The puzzles themselves are set in Beaudoire’s Elzevir, which started about 1860 as a commercial copy of Louis Perrin’s Caract. Headings are in the accompanying Elzevir Gras, which has more in common with Alexander Phemister’s Old Style Antique No. 7.

Source: gallica.bnf.fr License: All Rights Reserved.

Issue 21, August 8, 1928

The bold italic caps used for the solution du problème № 37 (above) are from Sphinx italique. One of the sans serifs seen in issue 249 from March 1933 (below) is Consul, which was available from several French foundries, including from Peignot & Fils as Antiques maigres larges.

Source: typedrawers.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Detail from issue 259, March 1, 1933

That Summer in Paris is a book by Morley Callaghan (1903–1990). In 1929, the Candian novelist “spent some months in Paris, where he was part of the great gathering of writers in Montparnasse that included Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and James Joyce.” [Wikipedia]

His “Memories of Tangled Friendships with Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Some Others” were published in 1963. This is the cover of Dell’s paperback (Laurel Edition 86649) from 1964, featuring all-caps Futura Black in the French national colors.

Outer cover of New Paltz, New Paltz

New Paltz, New Paltz by Mike Powell is the first book published by Double Negative. It’s a restless bildungsroman set in New York City concerned with everyday life, its frustrations and joys alike. The book is short and bittersweet, inspired by poetry as much as prose, especially the frank absurdism of writers like Charles Portis and James Tate. The style is simple but wonky, full of false starts and anti-climaxes—“clumsy beauty,” the book calls it.

The design is a response to this and the many touchpoints shared by author and designer: Keith Shore’s blobby illustration, Lorraine Louie’s yuppie surrealism, Susan Kare’s iconic desktop logos, Andy Warhol’s jazz album covers, and New York City parking signs, which inform the selection of ClearviewHwy and Highway Gothic.

The colors—a dirty purple, yellow, and gray—come directly from the book’s language: the “dim yellow lighting” of a dive bar, “a purple-gray mastiff” at the dog park, and the “yellow and purple flowers” a landscape architecture firm had planted in a city park to try to rewild the city with native plans, giving it a “calculated wilderness laid out in the middle of the city, like an apology for everything we had built around it,” which of course includes the numerous grays of concretes and buildings.

Outer front cover of New Paltz, New Paltz

Interior cover spread for New Paltz, New Paltz

Interior spread for New Paltz, New Paltz

A 1966 brochure for Arches National Monument in eastern Utah, created by the United States National Park Service. Safari is used in its boldest weight. The small type appears to be a bold condensed version of Cheltenham.

From Wikipedia:

Poodle Hat is the eleventh studio album by the American parody musician “Weird Al” Yankovic, released on May 20, 2003. It was the fifth studio album self-produced by Yankovic. The musical styles on the album are built around parodies and pastiches of pop of the early-2000s.

Cheltenham Bold Extra Condensed is used for the artist’s name. The album title is set in circled caps from the Demi weight of ITC Franklin Gothic, in reference to the New York City subway system. Art direction by Jackie Murphy and Nick Gamma, with photography by Mark Seliger.

[More info on Discogs]

The track listing on the back cover likewise uses Cheltenham. The bold sans is Champion Gothic.

Here is a gorgeous label on a box of a travel chess set sold by Henri Delaire in the first half of the 20th century. The manufacturer of the chess set is unknown.

Walter Biensur, the owner of the set, writes:

The first address is also that of the French Chess Federation, because Henri Delaire was also the first president:

“It was Henri Delaire who succeeded, in 1921, in giving life to the French Chess Federation (FFE), itself attached to the International Chess Federation (FIDE), which he founded in 1924 with Pierre Vincent. Henri Delaire is therefore an integral part of the world history of chess. [Translated from Echecs & Strategie]

Delaire was a chess theorist, Director of La Stratégie, the great monthly chess information magazine between 1867 and 1940. He was also the founder-honorary President of the Cercle Philidor.” [Translated from Le Café de la Régence]

I figured the title ‘Delaire’ was lettering, but Florian found that it’s Spread (c. 1887), issued by Farmer. He also found the typeface used for the Lombardic-style ‘Jeux De Salon’, which is Lettres Manuscrits, shown by Deberny & Cie in a c. 1878 type specimen.

The tagline ‘Spécialité pour Joueurs d’Echecs’ is set in the bold style of Cheltenham (1902), designed by Bertram Goodhue (assisted by Hannibal Ingalls Kimball, director of the Cheltenham Press)—although Hrant Papazian suggests it’s likely set in a French imitation of Cheltenham, as it would have been costly to transport lead type overseas. The first instance of é seems to be set in a larger point size of the same typeface, perhaps due to a lack of another é in the same point size.

The addresses (‘85, Faubourg Saint-Denis, 85’ & ‘4 et 6, Rue des Pyramides’) are set in Della Robbia (1902) by Thomas Maitland Cleland. The typeface used for ‘Mème Maison :’ is Sabines (c. 1901) by Beaudoire.

And finally, ‘Paris’ is set in Blanchard (1900), issued by Inland Type Foundry.

front cover

Tom Waits' eighth studio album Swordfishtrombones marks a decade since his debut album, Closing Time from 1973, and also marks a stylistic switch-up for Waits. For this album he would incorporate more influence from cabaret and beatnik music, leading to a more instrumentally rich and stranger sonic palette than his previous work.

Front cover text and Waits credit are in Empire. On the back cover, the tracklist is in Cheltenham Old Style Bold Condensed. Credits at the bottom are in several weights of Cheltenham Old Style.

The cover art for the CD version has larger type.

The cover concept is by Michael Russ together with Waits. Russ is also credited for the design including photography and illlustration, with art direction by Frank Mulvey.

[More info on Discogs]

back cover

Strange to your Ears: The Fabulous World of Sound with Jim Fassett is an album originally released in the 1950s by Columbia Masterworks. Hosted by Jim Fassett, this album consists of a series of strange sounds presented in a peculiar manner, and has become a cult classic for its experimental nature.

The title typeface is Morris Fuller Benton's Franklin Gothic Extra Condensed contrasted with Century Expanded Italic. Other typefaces are also found in the dotted speech bubbles.

[More info on Discogs]

Sans Serif Bold with Caslon Old Face and Cheltenham

Imago is a Canadian poetry magazine featuring contributions from poets Daphne Marlatt and Anselm Hollo, among others. It was published from 1964 to 1974.

The layout of each issue displays creative freedom, with the logo, illustration style, and paper color changing throughout the collection. Is this the work of an audacious designer or a simple amateur? Although the creator remains unknown, it's clear they embraced unconventional choices. The logo, set in Sans Serif Bold or Copperplate Gothic—sometimes in lowercase, sometimes in all caps, with variations in width—appears differently throughout the issues, building an experimental and playful collection.

Sans Serif Bold is Monotype’s copy of Rudolf Koch’s Grobe Kabel. It’s distinguished by a few details, like the shorter bar in G and the shorter roof in a.

Sans Serif Bold and Caslon Old Face

Copperplate Gothic and Univers

Copperplate Gothic and News Gothic

This telephone directory for East Chicago, Indiana (with Indiana Harbor) was published in March 1941 by Rueben H. Donnelley, Chicago, for the Illinois Bell Telephone Company.

The head is set in Kabel (or possibly Monotype’s copy, Sans Serif). The humble star of the show is Bell Gothic. Designed specifically for AT&T to set telephone directories, Chauncey H. Griffith’s typeface was first issued by Mergenthaler Linotype in 1938. It’s here combined with Century Oldstyle. Index headlines appear to be in Cheltenham.

Allgemeine Photographische Zeitung was an Austrian photography magazine published from 1919 to 1973. Shown here is the cover and two interior pages from the January 1933 issue, when the trade journal was published by Josef A. Detoni, Vienna.

The cover features an advertisement for Gevaert’s then new photographic plate for professionals, featuring the name “ASTRID” in the Ludwig & Mayer typeface Motor. This bold semi-slab is an all-caps companion to Karl Sommer’s Dynamo. Both were first cast in 1930.

The magazine name is in another typeface by Ludwig & Mayer, Erbar-Mediaeval lichtfett, here used with its alternate A. This nameplate was introduced in issue 10, 1931, replacing Perkeo which had been in use since 1924.

The bold wide typeface used for the information below the name is a local one: it’s Mönch-Extended, part of the Mönch-Antiqua series by the Viennese Poppelbaum foundry. Their Block is used for the claim of the advert, alongside Futura and Breite halbfette Elite-Grotesk – which was Poppelbaum’s name for Edel-Grotesk halbfett a.k.a Aurora-Grotesk VII.

Additional typefaces used for ads inside the magazine include the halbfett weight of Ludwig & Mayer’s Werbe-Grotesk, the light extended weight of Elite-Grotesk, and Hochblock by Berthold.

The ad by Fritz Gratl features Bernhard Handschrift. The inline caps are from Lichte fette Grotesk a.k.a. Phosphor, used here with both forms for R and zeros in place of the letter O.

The first edition cover of Space City News with Annlie Italic and Berthold-Grotesk Bold with its alternate a and w. “20 ¢” is added in Bulletin Typewriter.

Space City News was a short-lived (1969–1972) “New Left” newspaper in Houston, Texas. It focused on the pressing issues of the time, from the Vietnam War and nationwide struggle for civil rights, to police brutality and other matters central to the revolutionary reader base of the time (akin to publications like The Great Speckled Bird and The Chicago Seed), while also spotlighting local issues and artistry.

Notable stories of the first issue include William F. Buckley’s acquisition of local black Houston radio, labor strike coverage, the inadequacies of Texas State welfare program, and – the biggest story – the People’s Park uprising in Berkeley and subsequent police brutality against those protesting the University of California’s desire to turn it into a soccer field.

The first edition was dedicated to Pancho Villa, a general of the Mexican Revolution.

Spread with pages 2 and 3, with headlines in Bulletin Typewriter (left) and Twentieth Century Ultrabold Extended (right).

Detail from page 5, with Playbill and Berthold-Grotesk Bold. The typewriter face seen below is in a Cubic style. Lukas Krakora’s digital Aachen Typewriter comes close.

Spread with pages 6 and 7, Cooper Black (top left) and the Light weight of Berthold-Grotesk (“dallas goon squads of yore”).

Spread with pages 18 and 19, with Cooper Black (left) and headlines in Futura Bold Oblique (or maybe Spartan Black Italic) for “Rocky & Warhol?”, Futura Condensed for “grand jury”, and an unidentified face for “Kindergarten”.

Detail from page 19 with Franklin Gothic Extra Condensed, lettering, and an unidentified typewriter style

Detail from page 19 with contoured Cooper Black and Futura Display for “art cinema”

Detail from page 20 with Ultra Bodoni Extra Condensed and Cheltenham Bold Extra Condensed

Detail from page 23 with “space city news” in Playbill

This micro transistor radio was sold under a number of brand names including Arrow, Clairtone, and Printronic. Its origins go back to 1964 and the Sinclair Micromatic micro transistor radio.

This model, the Printronic IC-2000, is here shown in its original case with earphone. It was made In Hong Kong, ca. 1969. The logo is in caps from Countdown. The fonts used for the operation instructions include Univers Condensed (Selectric version?) and Cheltenham.

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Leo Tolstoy once wrote that every happy family is alike, whereas every unhappy family is unhappy in their own way. Likewise, every perfect book is perfect in the same way. This book does not belong to the category of perfection. Indeed, it is imperfect in numerous ways.

The text above is from the back cover or our book Imperfect. It is in many ways a curious book. It lacks covers, but comes in a box. When opening the box the reader first finds a single leaf note printed on one side. This note serves as an instruction as to how to handle the book so that reading is possible. The first words on the note tell the reader: “You will need a knife”.

The reason for such a strange mandate stems from the fact that the edges of the books are not trimmed. Meaning that in order to enjoy the contents of the book the reader has to cut open the pages themselves. Now at first this might seem like unnecessary attempt at making something different only for its own sake, but this would be a mistaken notion. In our books we always look for some reason for choosing a particular form, and Imperfect is no exception.

To explain why this form was, if not essential for the book, then at least beneficial for telling the story I will however need to take you on a small detour first. But in the end I promise that everything will be clear(er).

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

In a previous post I shared with you how we tried (and failed) to gather funds for a bike trip across the United States. But even despite our much lacking financial acumen we managed to make it to New York City. On the 3rd of June 2016 our great bicycle adventure began from the corner of the 17th St. and 2nd Ave. Our destination was the Pacific Coast, though at this point we didn’t dare tell anyone about it. We just said we were on our way to Delaware, and even then we were met with ill-hidden skepticism.

If you think that riding a bike across a continent wouldn’t be difficult enough by itself, we decided to raise the stakes and combine it with an art project. We had previously written and published books about our adventures, but these books had been conceived of and made after the journey already had ended. One example of such a book is Tour d’Europe in which we told the story of us cycling from our hometown Porvoo in Finland to Nice by the Mediterranean Sea.

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

The project we now envisioned was different, and in a sense simple enough – each day we would send out a postcard. In these postcards we would document our journey, where we went, how we felt, who we met, and what we thought about. Kaisa would illustrate and write the cards, whereas I would hop into the post offices to get the stamps cancelled by hand, as to provide the artifacts with yet another level of information.

The recipients to the cards were my young niece and nephews Alwa, Edwin, and Wilhelm, who at the time of our trip were 3, 6, and 8 years old and lived in Helsinki, Finland. Our reasoning was that the kids were at this point too young to understand or even care about the antics of their old relatives, but that in the distant future they might wish to learn about what we had done.

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

That we called our book Imperfect was born out of the fact that in making it we had to give up much of the control a graphic designer takes for granted. This is to say that there was a built-in randomness into the process. There was no chance to edit the already sent pages. Nor did we know what would happen the next day. Or even which cards would actually make it across the ocean. Making the book was for all intents and purposes an analog live-streaming of our adventure.

The more we thought about postcards, the more miraculous they began to appear to us. A postcard is not restrained by the same boundaries that control us: It crosses not only spatial borders, but temporal ones as well. Postcards speak to us in a voice that is simultaneously static and dynamic. Their voice is static inasmuch that which is written with ink on paper stands, but dynamic in the sense that their voice will have a different tone and meaning when read fifty years from now, compared to being read today. Which is to say that the meaning of the postcards will grow along with the kids.

The cards took their own road. We rode on ours. Fields of green turned into prairie, and prairie turned into mountains, forests and desert. Then one day in August we stood on the shore of the Pacific Ocean. And just a few days later we rolled over the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco. Against all odds we had crossed the continent. Our expedition was now over.

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

The next adventure was turning all this into something publishable. Our experiment of documenting our journey had been a success, at least as far as we were concerned. So why not share it with the world? First we sought permission from the kids, it was after all their cards we wanted to publish. To our great relief they granted us permission. Or at least cared too little to actually forbid us from moving forth with our book plans.

But you are really here to hear about the typography, right? Well, we’ve got you covered! The typeface we chose for our book is Cheltenham. It is a roman influenced by the aesthetic sensibilities of the Arts and Crafts movement, and drawn by Bertram Goodhue and Ingalls Kimball in 1896 in New York. It is a well-known typeface, and one with a fair share of idiosyncrasies. Characters that have, while much loved, also been at the receiving end of some criticism. The venerable American printer and historian of typography Daniel Berkeley Updike wrote: “Owing to certain eccentricities of form, [Cheltenham] cannot be read comfortably for any length of time.”

We could think of no typeface better suited for our book than Cheltenham. It is far from perfect but makes up for any such deficiency with a most charming personality. The missing old style figures for the typeface were drawn by our trusted lettering artist Teo Tuominen in the fall of 2016. He is also the person to credit for the beautiful script on the back cover post card.

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Along with the instructions on how to handle the book, the book block itself and the box it came in, we also included a map. This map depicts our slow progress across a continent, with statistics underneath to further illuminate what took place and where. But the main thing we sought to convey with the help of the map was all the kindness and help we received throughout our journey. While it might seem bleak at times, this trip imbued the two of us with a strong conviction that there still is hope for humanity, even when it doesn’t always feel that way.

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Postscript

Once the book was published we hosted a party to celebrate in its honor. The posters shown below advertised the event. The images depict our feelings regarding the journey: The underdog who took a serious beating but still remains standing, and the strong pioneer lady who is prepared to fight for what she believes in. In the third one you can see young Alwa being held by me. (She got to participate as the representative of the kids, as the brothers had already made their appearance in another project of ours. But that is a story for another time.)

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.