First edition (hardcover) by Bartholomew House, 1967, illustrated by Bill Wenzell. The illustrations on the front of jacket are by Roy E. LaGrone. Secondary typefaces include Craw Clarendon Condensed, Filmotype Harmony (or Photo-Lettering’s copy, Almadine Script), and Century Expanded Italic.

Coffee Tea or Me? was advertised as “the uninhibited memoirs of two airline stewardesses”, and credited to Trudy Baker and Rachel Jones. In fact, it was ghost-written by Donald Bain. The 1967 hardcover dust jacket features Caruso Roxy, set in all caps. The same typeface was also used for the paperback cover, now bigger and in mixed case, as well as for the three sequels published until 1975. In 1973, the book was made into a film.

Caruso Roxy is a typeface that we’ve come to associate with the swinging 60s.

Coffee Tea or Me? The uninhibited memoirs of two airline stewardesses. First Bantam edition (paperback), November 1968 with cover art by Bill Wenzel and small text in all-caps News Gothic.

The Coffee Tea or Me Girls’ ’Round the World Diary. First edition (hardcover) by Grosset & Dunlap, 1970. The multilingual toasts are stereotypically added in more or less fitting typefaces: Peignot (French), Post-Antiqua (Hebrew), Cloister Black (German), Centaur (Spanish), Akzidenz-Grotesk Extended (Scandinavian), Jessen-Schrift (Greek), Americana (English), Mandarin (Japanese), and Century Schoolbook (Italian).

Jacket and cover with spine lettering

The Coffee Tea or Me Girls’ ’Round the World Diary. Paperback edition by Bantam Books, April 1971, with small type in Alternate Gothic.

The Coffee Tea Or Me Girls: Lay it On The Line, Bantam Books, 1973. The fat years are over: the main typeface now is Caruso Roxy’s light weight. Secondary text is in italic caps from Caledonia.

The Coffee Tea Or Me Girls Get Away From It All, Bantam Books, 1975, with Helvetica used for the text in red.

Man of La Mancha is a 1965 musical adaptation of Don Quixote, with a book by Dale Wasserman, lyrics by Joe Darion, and music by Mitch Leigh. The libretto was published by Random House in 1966, featuring an illustratin by Al Hirschfeld and Caruso Roxy for the title. Its amorphous glyphs allowed the jacket designer to knead the words into place, squeezing the second M down to x-height so that the two lines fit snug together.

Detail from the inner flap of the book jacket, with credits in Bodoni

The first page of a large 480-page catalog advertising goods offered by Feldheim, Gotthelf & Co., an Australian importer of “British, Continental and American Merchandise”. Founded in the 1850s, the company entered a period of growth starting with a new warehouse in 1892. This catalog, published around 1905, offers an extensive window into essentially the entire breadth of goods available to Australian households at the time. The company entered a period of decline a few years later due to partners retiring from business, and in 1924 began the process of shutting down the company which concluded in 1927.

The catalog is set in a smorgasbord of period typefaces. The shown page features Facade for the company’s name, followed by Maltese Shaded, Condensed Sans Serifs Italic (see Condensed & Elongated Sans Serifs), Grotesque No. 4A, and Reed’s Runic Extended (for “Sydney”). “On Sale” is in DeVinne Ornamental and the list of items in De Vinne. The caps used for the name and location shown integrated in the red border are from Concave. Some of the typefaces used for smaller text are yet unidentified.

Ragtime

From Paul Dini & Chip Kidd’s Batman Animated (1998):

These imaginatively rendered title cards were a high point of each Batman episode. While some (like “Harley’s Holiday” and “Time out of Joint”) were character portraits, most often the cards depicted an emotional impression of the given episode’s theme. According to Eric Radomski, who designed many of the cards, “Going with the overall retro-forties feel we were giving the show, we wanted to treat the episodes as mini-movies. The title cards allowed us to create great drama in a very subtle fashion. It was a process of trying to capture what the overall episode was, and not just show a scene or moment from it.”

Most of the title cards of Batman: The Animated Series’ first season (which first aired in 1992–1993) use fonts that were available from Letraset.

See also the post on the series’ logos.

Engravers Old English

Pendry Script

Rundfunk

Commercial Script and Compacta Italic

Pendry Script

Cable (Kabel) Light

Univers 49

Brody

Univers 49

Peignot Medium

Alpin Gothic

Plaza

Pendry Script and Compacta

Windsor Bold Outline

Compacta

Plaza

Peignot Medium

Brush Script

Microgramma Medium Extended

Mistral

Compacta Bold Outline

Univers 49

Goudy Handtooled

Mistral

ITC Benguiat

Brody

Univers 49

Plaza and Univers 49

Mistral

Laser

Univers 49

Stencil Bold

Univers 49

Univers 49

Papyrus

Berling Bold

Mistral

Mistral

Ragtime

Berling Bold

LCD Outline

Cloister Bold

Shatter

Helvetica Extra Light and Medium

Goudy Extra Bold

Freestyle Script and Flash

Plaza Inline

City Medium

Murray Hill Bold

Plaza and Univers 49

Ragtime

Tarragon

Compacta Outline

Titus Medium

Augustea Open

Cortez

This ham radio QSL card from around the late 1940s uses an eclectic mix of period typefaces. The big type for “W6ND” is Glamour Bold (c.1948). “Burlingame, California” at the top is in George Salter’s Flex (1937), and Lindsay’s name features Keynote (1933) by Willard T. Sniffin. The form labels are set in the upright style of Piranesi (1930), also by Sniffin. Unlike Benton’s Piranesi Italic, it hasn’t been digitized yet. The bolder line in the bottom left corner uses the similar Bernhard Modern (1937).

An album from the legendary Wackie’s record label based in the Bronx, active in the late 1970s and 1980s. Helmed by Lloyd Barnes, it became an important place for roots reggae and dub productions with many artists coming from Jamaica to get the special Bullwackie treatment.

The album’s typography is constructed using dry-transfer lettering, mainly Letraset. It’s interesting to see an X-Acto knife reproduced on the cover. It’s shown next to a microphone, a reel-to-reel tape, and what looks like a ruler. Perhaps, a nod to the way the cover is made? The bulk of Wackie’s album covers were very much in the pared down, lo-fi style, appropriate to the sound of the label itself.

The Presenting line is set in Tintoretto. the rest of the type on the front is set in Raphael, and Eurostile.

Note that the images shown are from the reissue from 2005, which scanned the original covers and reproduced them. Early 2000s saw a big interest in the Wackie’s label and many reissues were published in Germany by Basic Channel at that time.

The album was designed Leslie A. Moore, who ran LAM Graphics International design studio, specializing in album covers. You can see more of Leslie’s work at discogs.com

Back of the album is dominated by Bodoni Bold, Times New Roman, and Eurostile. The credits of musicians on the back are curious in that they use the caps from Bodoni, and lowercase from Times New Roman. This certainly is easy to do with dry-transfer lettering.

Original back cover with the distribution credits to Wackie’s and the year at bottom right

Front cover for Our Biggest Hits. “THE DRIFTERS” and “‘OUR BIGGEST HITS’” are set in Egyptienne Bold Condensed (width stretched to 133%).

Our Biggest Hits (1964) is the fourth studio album by the Drifters, released by Atlantic Records. It was reissued as Under the Boardwalk, immediately after that single became a hit.

This use is specifically for the original cover, designed by Loring Eutemey and used for both albums. Subsequent repressings of Under the Boardwalk used a different design, also by Eutemey.

[More info on Discogs]

Back cover for Our Biggest Hits. “THE DRIFTERS” and “‘OUR BIGGEST HITS’” are set in Haas Inserat-Grotesk / Neue Aurora VIII (width stretched to 150%). The track list is set in Anzeigen-Grotesk / Neue Aurora IX, with side headers in Grotesque No. 9 (italic) and the writing credits underneath each track set in News Gothic (italic). The liner notes, written by Bob Altshuler, are set in Primer (normal, with song and album titles in italic). The credits, including a typo regarding the catalog number of Save the Last Dance for Me (as Atlantic’s 8000 series only went up to 8305), are also set in Primer (italic). The address info is set in Clarendon.

Front cover for Under the Boardwalk. Mostly the same design as Our Biggest Hits, except for “UNDER THE BOARDWALK” which is of a normal width (as well as losing its quotes).

Back cover for Under the Boardwalk. Mostly the same as Our Biggest Hits, except for “‘OUR BIGGEST HITS’” being replaced with “UNDER THE BOARDWALK”. The track list is also different: “Drip Drop” is removed and replaced with “Under the Boardwalk” as the opening track. The catalog number typo in the credits has been fixed.

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.

[More info on Discogs]

An atmospheric 1950s sleeve design with two colorfully striped planets, for Nixa’s 7″ release with the first and fourth movement from Gustav Holt’s The Planets: Mars, the Bringer of War, and Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity. The music was recorded by the London Philharmonic Orchestra (here credited as Philharmonic Promenade Orchestra for contractual reasons) under Sir Adrian Boult (1889–1983).

The fonts in use are Annonce and Stephenson Blake’s Condensed Sans Serifs Italic.

[More info on Discogs]

In 2025, the Typographische Gesellschaft Austria (Typographic Society Austria, tga) organized the anniversary edition of what is one of the best typography conferences I’ve attended. The symposium took place in late August on Burg Raabs an der Thaya – which is, hands down, the most spectacular venue for such an event.

Visiting the symposium allowed me to revisit some of the places I had photographed on previous occasions. This includes the script lettering on the former shop of Josef Stallecker on Hauptplatz, the municipality’s main square. On two sides of the single-story building, it mentions his profession, “Sattler Tapezierer” (“upholsterer, decorator”), and the areas of services, “Polstermöbel Bodenbelag” (“upholstered furniture, floor covering”).

With their reluctant connections and the crammed m, the low-contrast letterforms reminded me of IBM Script, a monospaced script made in the 1960s for the IBM Selectric typewriter. However, the actual source is another three decades older than that: the unknown sign maker patterned the letterforms after Signal, a foundry typeface first cast by Berthold in 1931. Its slightly awkward shapes – strung like beads on a string, with built-in connectors – have to do with the fact that metal script typefaces from that era were produced to have no overhangs, so that no delicate parts would break in the stereotyping process.

The lettering was engraved into the plaster and then painted in. I’m not sure what happened to “Josef” and “Sattler” – were these words left uncolored? Did they use a different color that faded away over the years?

Established in 1912 (by Josef’s parents?), the family business is currently run by Thomas Stallecker. It’s now located about 200 m to the west, still at Hauptplatz. The painted sign on the yellow façade reads “Raumausstatter Stallecker” (“interior decorator”) and uses Tintoretto. This bicolor typeface – a shaded variant of Aldo Manutio – was issued by Schelter & Giesecke in 1894. It got a new lease of life after Letraset issued their version in the early 1970s. Stallecker uses it in two shades of brown, with an underline for good measure.

For comparison, a resetting of the words in FDI Lettograph. This 2024 digitization is largely faithful to the original, with the exception of the p. In Signal, this letter is open at the bottom, as in German school script models (and also in formal scripts).

Metal Signal came with two forms for the lowercase r, but without one that omits the exit stroke (FDI Lettograph automatically inserts such a contextual alternate, see above). The sign painter invented an optimized terminal form for “Sattler”, but didn’t use it for “Tapezierer”. In “Stallecker”, they made up for it with an impromptu swash.

The business’s new location with the name in bichromatic Tintoretto

View of Raabs, with the castle – the conference venue featuring the tga’s pink flag – in the background

Reminder that there’s no fascism without warmongering, and that war inevitably comes with injury to life and limb.

This Verbandpäckchen Nr. 1313 Größe III (“Bandage pack No. 1313 Size III”) of the German Wehrmacht has text set in two weights from Element. The simplified Gotisch was issued by the Bauer foundry in 1933–1934 as one of the first typefaces in the modernized blackletter subgenre that coincided with the early years of the Nazi regime. The notice about the package being “keimfrei, luft-, staub-, wasserdicht” (“sterile, airtight, dust- and waterproof) is set in a less commonly seen lighter weight. Number and size info are in a bold Bodoni.

The bandages were produced by the Verbandstoff- und pharmazeutische Fabrik Ulm-Frankfurt a. M., G. m. b. H. in Ulm-Donau. The shown item was part of remaining stocks of the U.S. Army, from the estate of Cpl. Erich Wick, Army Medical Corps, German Labor Service, 1950.

Source: www.ebay.com TRACKNINE22. License: All Rights Reserved.

Vinyl version, front cover

In July 2016, Australian electronic group the Avalanches released their second album, Wildflower.

While the front cover has no type at all, except for a sticker with Jersey M54 for the band name, all-caps Arnold Böcklin for the album title, and ITC Franklin Gothic for additional text, the typographic party takes place on the back: it features a different style for each track on the album, with embroidered letterforms. Most of the song names are based on fonts, with or without modifications.

Source: www.ebay.com TRACKNINE22. License: All Rights Reserved.

Vinyl version, back cover

The Leaves Were Falling: Brush Script
Because I’m Me: handwriting?
Frankie Sinatra: Benguiat Caslon (or a digital version thereof, like Emfatick NF)
Subways: Arial Bold
Going Home: Gillies Gothic
If I Was A Folkstar: West Barnum
Colours: Electric Circus
Zap!: (similar to) Strand Midnite
The Noisy Eater: Baby Teeth
Wildflower: Arnold Böcklin
Harmony: Tango
Live A Lifetime Love: Allura
Park Music: ITC Avant Garde Gothic (?)
Livin’ Underwater (Is Somethin’ Wild): loosely based on Williamson Skidoo (?) and an unidentified script
The Wozard of Iz: Pretorian and Futura
Over the Turnstiles: Motter Femina and Turnpike or similar
Sunshine: Broadway
Light Up: lettering?
Kaleidoscopic Lovers: Commercial Script
Stepkids: Kabel Black
Saturday Night Inside Out: Druk Condensed or similar?

The headings for the sides of the vinyl version are in Windsor Extra Bold Condensed.

The art direction is credited to Chris Hopkins at Lost Art and band member Robbie Chater. Hopkins also provided design and illustration, the latter together with Emi Ueoka. Fergadelic (Fergus Purcell) did the butterfly logo. Kris Vierra took care of quilting and textiles.

[More info on Discogs]

Source: www.ebay.com rowerecords. License: All Rights Reserved.

CD version, front cover

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CD version, back cover

Source: www.discogs.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Inner sleeve with more octagonal caps

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Inner sleeve ft. a naïve sans and script lettering based on Kalligraphia

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Inner sleeve with more Baby Teeth and lettering similar to Williamson Skidoo. The Biz Markie photo is by David Corio.

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Sheet with five promo stickers

Source: lost-art.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Vinyl record label

An advert from the early 1940s places the Bonmatí pharmacy at the upperside of the Rambla in Figueres, in the Catalonian region of Girona. Although the pharmacy moved to a new address few years ago, the old signage is still preserved at its original location. At the new address, the Bonmatí family preserves a ceramic sign and the cabinet that was used to store the labels for the pharmacy’s products. Typography and lettering, letterpress and lithography. A few millimetres of paper were used to create small graphic universes to organise the categories of pharmaceutical products.

“Para tomar a cucharadas” and “Jarabe de savia de pino”: Neo Futura (Neufville’s name for Futura Black), Grotesca ancha nueva (Gans), and Antigua Mercedes (Neufville’s name for Tages-Antiqua)
“Uso indicado” and “Uso interno”: Romana estrecha negra (Fundición Tipográfica Nacional)
“Veterinaria” (and also “Fricciones”, “Inhalaciones” etc.): Cleopatra negra (Iranzo)
“Alcohol 96”: Futura (Neufville/Bauer)
“Tintura de Yodo” (and “Alcohol alcanforado”): Futura chupada, Neufville’s name for Futura Condensed
“Agua picrica”: Predilecta (Iranzo’s version of Kristall-Grotesk)
“Limonada purgante”: Grotesca Mercantil (Gans; see Longina)

“Agua de azahar”: unidentified typeface

“A toques”: Bernhard-Kursiv fett (Bauer)

Rows 1–3: Romana estrecha negra (serif) and an unidentified sans
Row 4: Predilecta
Row 5: “Bicarbonato de sosa” is in an unidentified typeface that has several glyphs in common with Roundhead and is also very close to Runic Grotesque (but with asymmetrical T). “Una cucharadita cada 2 horas” is in Venus Bold (Bauer).

Row 1: Fresko a.k.a. Cartoon (Bauer) with Predilecta
Rows 2–4: Antigua Mercedes, Futura, and Cleopatra. The labels in the last row additionally features Grotesca ancha nueva (“Puncem”) and Futura Condensed.

Top left (“Timol”): a local version of Zeitungs-Grotesque (Grotesca ancha by Gans, Grotesca negra by FTN, or Fette Grotesk by Bauer), Venus, Futura chupada negra, Bodoni, and a local version of Copperplate Gothic (Helénica ancha by Gans or Espartana estrecha by FTN)

Top right (“Callicida”): an unidentified wide grotesk, Futura, Venus

Bottom left: both weights of Cleopatra, Futura Italic, Grotesca ancha nueva, and a fine Bowl of Hygieia

Bottom right: Venus and Futura

Lithographic labels by J. Garcia printing house, Barcelona. Most text on these is lettering. The address is added in Cleopatra.

Different styles of lettering

On the back cover of the Society of Industrial Artists (SIA) Journal, no. 47 from October 1955, the Council of Industrial Design advertised the Design Centre for British Industries, to be opened at 28 Haymarket SW1 in the spring of 1956. From the University of Brighton Design Archives (via Jisc):

On 26 April 1956 Prince Philip opened the “Design Centre for British Industries” in London. This represented the end of a long fought campaign by the Council of Industrial Design, which desired a shop window to promote its own activities in support of British industry, and marked a triumph for all those who had advocated the need for a permanent display of British manufactured products in the nation’s capital. The building in Haymarket became the Council’s new home and was managed between 1956 and 1966 by Major General J M (Jack) Benoy, who joined the body in 1949. A vibrant programme of exhibitions took place in the display space downstairs, while in the offices above plans were made for exhibitions around the country and overseas.

The pink manicules are from Chap-Book Directors, which is part of a series of decorative dingbats and woodcut-style illustrations designed by Will H. Bradley for ATF’s The American Chap-Book periodicals, promoted for use with his Bewick Roman.

This specific manicule with the big frilly cuff is arguably the most prominent glyph from this series. Nick – founder of and top contributor to the Flickr Manicule group – pointed out that it has been adopted and used in various contexts, see the comments to a previous Use.

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. 

Circue is a naïve display face that looks like it was created with a hole punch. Shown by VGC in 1973 without designer credits, it can here be seen in use on the sleeve for “The Day My Baby Gave Me A Surprize”. The song was released as the first single from Devo’s 1979 album, Duty Now for the Future.

[More info on Discogs]

The back cover mentions the title of the B-side, “Penetration in the Centrefold”, and credits the graphics to Devo, Inc. The wide all-caps sans is some derivative of Blair (but not ITC Blair), possibly Amsterdam Card Grotesque, which is Photo-Lettering’s adaptation of Kaart-Antieke. The bold style is Univers.

The 1976 release of The Modern Lovers, compiled from recordings made earlier in the decade, for an aborted LP for Warner Bros and other sources. The sleeve is a triumph of minimal design, adapting an aerodynamic heart logo that the band used on an early business card, rendering it in the stark, precise form of a neon sign glimpsed on a dark night.

Filmotype Lucky is effortlessly evokes this mid-century aesthetic. Ebony was enjoying a renaissance at the time (see also Blondie’s 1976 debut) – the emerging punk movement favouring clean, strong letterforms over the ornamentation of psychedelia and after. Further examples include Franklin Gothic on Ramones and Gill Sans Extra Bold on the “Neat Neat Neat” single sleeve, both likewise from 1976. (Jamie Reid’s “ransom note” style which would become a cliche of punk design developed independently).

The neon motif is continued in the use of Kaufmann, with its continuous line representing neon tubing, for the LP credits, supported by Gill Sans. The band logo that appears on the labels as well as on the flyer reproduced on the back in in all-lowercase City Bold.

Jim Blodgett is credited with “LP co-ordination”, which may or may not include the sleeve design.

[More info on Discogs]

Back cover. The reproduced flyer for a gig at Gloucester High Auditorium additionally features Futura Black.

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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).

License: All Rights Reserved.

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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In 1881, brothers Hermann, Gustav, and Wilhelm Schurath opened a paper shop with a bag-making workshop in Leipzig. They added a paper mill in their home town of Brandis, Saxony, in 1883. Fifty-five years later, in 1938, Wilhelm Schurath G.m.b.H. issued this invoice for 2,260 glassine window envelopes with gummed flaps, plus another fifty of second quality.

The design of the invoice features four different styles from a large sans-serif family that went under various names. The company name and location are shown in the bold extended Edel-Grotesk fett a.k.a. Aurora V. All other preprinted text (disregarding the typewritten additions) is set in three weights from the regular-wide Neue moderne Grotesk a.k.a. Aurora I–IV.

Another invoice in SLUB’s Saxonia collection shows that the same basic design was used already in 1936. On that version, parts of the header are set in two weights of Futura, though, resulting in a less harmonious pairing.

According to Frank Schimpke, the company continued to operate as Wilhelm Schurath KG until 1970, when it was nationalized and renamed VEB Verpackungsmittelwerk Brandis.

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.