From Wikipedia:

“Formentera” is a song by Spanish singer Aitana in collaboration with Argentine rapper Nicki Nicole, released through Universal Music Spain on Dec 3, 2021. The song was later included on the tracklist of her third studio album, Alpha (2023).

The design created by Paula Vila and Víctor Clemente, founders of the agency Realmente Bravo, evokes a boarding pass. In the song, the concept of a flight to the Spanish island of Formentera is used as a metaphor for love, given that it has no airport and flights are nonexistent.

[More info on Discogs]

Outlawed is a feminist western novel written by Anna North and published by Bloomsbury in January 2021. Rachel Willey’s jacket design was selected as LitHub’s Best Book Cover of 2021 (tied with Thomas Colligan’s work for Mona). Jury member Erik Carter comments:

I love how this cover plays with Western tropes—a cowboy hat, handkerchief, and slab serif typography—but then subverts them with a healthy dash of campiness and fun that you rarely see in the genre.

The title appears to be in caps from Egyptian Ornamented. The condensed face with mid-stem spurs was first shown in wood in 1870 and was digitized by mpressInteractive in 2013. I’m not sure about the author’s name. It could be Clarified JNL, a 2020 digitization of a Clarendon Extended – but with squeezed letterforms. The small bits – “A novel” and R.O. Kwon’s blurb – use one of the digitizations of Haas Clarendon.

Art direction by Patti Ratchford.

Pixel Pinkie is an Australian animated series that aired on ABC3 and Nine Network in 2009, and is considered one of the worst cartoons in history. From Wikipedia:

Pixel Pinkie is about two girls, Nina and Anni. During the first episode, Nina moves in to a new town where she meets Anni and gets a mobile cellphone with a digital genie named Pixel Pinkie in it which can make her wishes come true, but they both have to keep it a secret. Each episode sees Nina wishing for something from Pixel Pinkie, and when they offend her when her wish goes wrong, both Nina and Anni have to solve their problem alone.

The main title logo is based on Groovy Happening JNL font, with lowered capitals, the alternate non-swashy n included in the font, a customized k, and an added 3D effect. Groovy Happening JNL was designed by Jeff Levine as an extended version of the earlier Action Is, with added lowercase characters. Action Is in turn is an indirect revival of either Caruso Roxy or Holiday.

La Société Bleue feels like an afternoon on the Riviera. The name sets the tone: French, clear, elegant. Blue as a mood, a color, and a symbol. In the branding of the Stuttgart-based brand of cashmere pullovers, this translates into a finely tuned color system based on different shades of blue complemented by gold accents. The colors elegantly convey depth and character.

The logo itself combines maritime lightness with a touch of vintage using Maroni in its Regular weight. It’s complemented by the teckel symbol – abstracted, stylized, as a figure. It appears on labels, clothing, and accessories; as a mascot, key signet, and well-thought-out element in the visual system. The accompanying typefaces are Carta Nueva and Sign Maker JNL.

Packaging design for Xochi Prebiotic Agave Soda made with 100% natural ingredients, respecting the traditions surrounding aguamiel.

The concept aims to capture the essence of Mexican cultural elements and create a brand identity that pays homage to its vibrant heritage from a contemporary point of view. We drew inspiration from the streets, using a wide range of references such as local signage, festive traditional costumes, decorations, flowers, and everyday graphic expressions.

We wanted the cans to feel like a celebration of Mexican culture from a pop perspective, where colors are vibrant and typography is bold, oversized, and playful.

The Comicraft fonts The Story So Far (with modified A) and Monster Mash were used to create the logo in the movie poster and trailer for the upcoming The Mandalorian and Grogu. The poster was designed by Bond and additionally uses Dollar Days JNL and Fineberg.

A broadsheet fanzine published by Badrock Design. Each issue features one of the London clubs frequented regularly by the Beatles at the height of their fame in the 1960s. Clubs such as the Ad-Lib, the Bag O'Nails, the Scotch of St James amongst others, were the centre of music, art and fashion in London during a period of creativity and optimism in the 60s. Intrigued by George Harrison's much quoted repost when he left the band during the filming of Let it Be, the publications aim to summon up the little documented, tight world of clubs attended by the movers and shakers of the time.

Each issue recreates the graphic language of its subject, changing from issue to issue to capture the atmosphere and experience of each unique establishment. From Peter Jackson’s 2021 documentary The Beatles: Get Back:

Friday 10 January 1969
George: I’m leaving the band now.

John Lennon: When?

George: Now.
Get a replacement. Place an ad in NME and get a few people.
See you round the clubs…

Host Sam Reich jumping joyously on the Game Changer set

Game Changer is a comedy panel game show produced and broadcast on the streaming service Dropout TV hosted by Sam Reich. The premise of the game show is that “the game changes every show,” so the reoccurring panel of comedian contestants have no idea what game they are playing until they start playing it.

Game Changer’s logo uses the fonts FF Prater Script for the word “Game” and Trade Gothic Next Heavy Compressed for the word “Changer”. In Season 5, much of the advertising used a hand painted style of Sam Reich as a magician, and used the font Sign Lettering JNL for the title on those advertisements instead.

Game Changer also displays the prompts for the contestants, and the info card of each contestant in Trade Gothic Next. The font used for the credit roll is Proxima Nova.

The strangest font among Game Changer’s history has to be All P Keyboard. This comedic font is entirely composed of the lowercase letter p, mapped to all other characters. The p glyph in this font is the same as the one from the Helvetica typeface.

This odd font choice comes from Game Changer season 2, episode 4, “A Sponsored Episode”, where the contestants are tasked with pitching random products they have never seen before. Contestant Mike Trapp receives a normal keyboard, except that all the letters have been replaced with the letter p. His hilarious yet surprisingly convincing presentation gained lots of views online, which gave Dropout the idea to make this an actual font you could use and released it in 2021 with the premiere of season 4 of the show.

This is the only font that Dropout has ever released themselves, and is available to download for users who have a subscription.

Game Changer Season 7 poster

Game Changer Season 6 poster

Game Changer Season 5 poster, with the title displayed in Sign Lettering JNL

Game Changer Season 4 poster

Game Changer Season 3 poster

Game Changer Season 1 promotional material

Sam Reich gleefully holding three large rubber ducks behind his podium, with the question prompt displayed on the monitor beside him reading “Gimme a Duck” in Trade Gothic Next

Screencap of Rekha Shankar’s entrance on S6EP7 Beat the Buzzer.
Rekha’s name, pronouns, and Instagram handle are all displayed in Trade Gothic Next.

Mike Trapp’s torso presenting an all-p keyboard

Studio MPLS brings Roastar’s coffee tins to life with Coquette by Mark Simonson, adding a nostalgic yet vibrant touch to the packaging. Coquette’s unconnected, upright script delivers a playful, retro flair that pairs seamlessly with the bright color blocking and bold geometric patterns. Arrevederci JNL and Main Feature JNL, two quirky sans serifs by Jeff Levine, add to the retro vernacular feel of the design. The result is a packaging design that feels like a fresh take on classic pantry staples—timeless with just the right amount of charm.

Read more about the project on the Dieline blog.

Desperate Oasis is a two player card game from the independent game studio Weast Coast.

To help promote the game after its release in November of 2024, Weast Coast unleashed this social media ad campaign. Like the game, the ads were designed by the brand and packaging studio Young Jerks.

The headlines for the ads feature Central Type’s Zonk set in all-caps. The secondary type features both School Project JNL and Goudy Two Shoes.

Every year the music blog New Commute asks graphic designers from all over the world to make some artwork depicting their top five albums released in the passing year. For this project, I scanned in some of my personal matchbook collection to rework my favorite albums into fake, long forgotten matchbooks. Using a wide array of my personal favorite typefaces from across eras I was able to put together this depiction of my favorite albums.

Deus ex Machina is a lifestyle brand rooted in Sydney, Australia. We recently featured a no-nonsense jacket from their collection. This time we’d like to share two apparel prints that are undoubtedly about having fun – fun with content, and fun with fonts.

The first one is a T-shirt titled “Pipes”. In it, a cartoon from the Andy Capp series, very famous in Great Britain and Australia, stands central. It depicts a man playing a phantasy instrument reminiscent of bagpipes. The punchline below reads “loud pipes save lives” which is a famous excuse among motorcyclists to justify the noise of their machines. This line as much as the brand name above the drawing displays Cardinal Fruit, a sub-family in the larger Cardinal collection designed and published by Production Type under the guidance of Jean-Baptiste Levée. Cardinal Fruit is a condensed roman style referencing the advertising aesthetics of the 1980s, especially in the field of personal computers. “Deus Recs and Publishing” is added in Grilli Type’s GT America Mono.

The prints on the “Nimbus” shirts and longsleeves feature Cardinal Fruit, too. It’s used for the brand name, combined with Deerfield JNL, a boxy all-caps sans designed by Jeff Levine, for “Worldwide Service Manual”. Here the “meaning” of the message goes deliberately bananas: “We’ve tipped the cap to the modern day grovers and gone all out on the logo-heavy, non-sensical slogan vibe, added a few flashes of color and voila: a long sleeve set to lift even the most pessimistic of outlooks.”

To be complete, additional fonts visible in the images are Cal Fraktur Modern, Windsor, and Eurostile.

Mentados is a company that produces fermented and carbonated drinks. It is based in northern Mexico, in Hermosillo, Sonora. The first flavor launched is the original fermented and carbonated kombucha drink.

The brand conveys a unique, fun, Mexican crafty feeling, as well as something slightly retro and groovy, like your uncle's old baseball team when he was in college.

The wordmark is custom lettering designed by Alan Guzmán in 2021. It’s paired with a range of typefaces.

Christoffer Leka, Kaisa Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

The good news? Well, at least navigating is easy. For a good amount of time the only thing on the horizon has been a tiny dot that has to be the lighthouse we’re headed towards. Other than that it’s just water. Lots of water. All around us.

The bad news, then? Well, Kaisa isn’t feeling well. Her seasickness has increased in direct proportion to the intensity of the swells. Right now her color is closer to that of the sea underneath us than would be desirable. Taking to land at the last outpost Yttre Borgen proved impossible as the waves along the rocky shoreline would permit nothing of the sort. Now it’s been more than an hour since we made the decision to continue, and there’s no relief in sight for Kaisa before we reach small lighthouse on Märket.

According to our calculations it would take us two hours to paddle to that desolate island from the last outpost. Right now those calculations start to feel overly optimistic. The fact that Kaisa isn’t feeling well is clearly slowing us down.

Under normal circumstances this wouldn’t worry me, but right now our window of calm winds is rapidly closing. Other than my concerns about the wind the weather is close to perfect. The sky is clear and and now at nine PM the evening air is warm without being oppressively so. I try to discern if the wind is growing in its strength, but my deliberations are broken by some strange noises behind me. As I turn around I see Kaisa throwing up on the front deck of her kayak. This is not good.

However, every tragedy tends to have a silver lining, and after Kaisa has paid her dues to Neptune she begins to feel remarkably better. Our speed increases to its normal rate and soon we are able to perceive more and more details in the architecture ahead of us. We’re getting closer.

Christoffer Leka, Kaisa Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Christoffer Leka, Kaisa Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

An hour later we’re standing on firm ground. It’s not a big island by any stretch of the imagination, measuring some 300 meters at its longest and a 100 meters at its widest. The island is also remarkably flat, with the highest point excluding buildings and other man-made constructions no more than three meters above sea level. But in this particular case we’re not interested in any of these geographic features, we’re just extraordinarily exhilarated to have something solid underneath our feet.

The next day we hoist our small flag on the side of the lighthouse. Seeing it sway in the gale wind makes us feel proud – we have achieved something few have. (Incidentally, the same day a taxi boat carrying tourists arrives at the shore of the island, but due to the heavy sea has to turn around after several tries. It fails in doing what two fledgling paddlers had been able to pull off. Only the knowledge that we still have to make it back to the mainland once the storm had set kept our smugness at bay.)

Christoffer Leka, Kaisa Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Christoffer Leka, Kaisa Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

But back to the flag. We felt that out here on this strange little island was exactly where our flag belonged.

The text on the flag reads “Till Ytterskären”, which roughly translated would read “To the Outermost Islands”. I say roughly translated intentionally, as in Swedish there are more than fifteen different words describing various types of islands, whereas in English, at least to the best of my knowledge, has far fewer. Sorry, English, you lose this one!

But most of you are here for type-related content, so I’ll now share with you the details regarding the design of the flag. The main two lines are set in Ambroise Francois drawn by Jean François Porchez, with the “Till” set in Diversa Sans by Dino dos Santos and Pedro Leal. On the Duck side of the flag we have the numbers 2018, and those are set in Narrow Roman Stencil JNL by Jeff Levine.

Christoffer Leka, Kaisa Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Christoffer Leka, Kaisa Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

But now I feel we should return to the island. The reason I chose to call the island strange a bit earlier has partially to do with the topographical features I already wrote about. But it gets much stranger than that. You’re in for both a history lesson as well as a geography one. For the island Märket not only lies right in-between Finland and Sweden, it also belongs to both countries. Divided half and half, in a sense.

And when I say divided, you might picture a border running right across. That’s where you’d be wrong. Märket hosts one of the most peculiar borders on this planet, as it runs like a ribbon tied into a bow, seemingly all over this insignificant rock in the middle of the sea. The reasons for the strange form of the border are historical – back when Finland still belonged to Russia, a lighthouse was built here. Now as we know unfortunately all too well the Russians have not always viewed borders as something changeless, and thus the lighthouse was constructed on what was then the Swedish side. When the borderline was revised later it was agreed that Sweden should receive an equal share of island as the one Finland had now occupied.

Thus if one wants to take a small swim after enjoying a sauna (of course there is a sauna in a Finnish lighthouse!) then one inevitably crosses over from Finland to Sweden, and once more back to Finland before reaching the water. All in the span of less than a 100 meters. But the form of the border is not the end of the peculiarity – this border is also the longest land border between Finland and Sweden. Two countries that share a total border of some 545 kilometers. Now there’s something to ponder on those long nights you lay awake in bed!

Christoffer Leka, Kaisa Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Our “Till Ytterskären” flag accompanied us to four more lighthouses that summer, each journey worthy its own entry. I’ve included a couple of photographs from those trips as well, but for the stories you should head over to our homepage.

Christoffer Leka, Kaisa Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Studio MPLS designed the logo and packaging for Strange Lands, a (now defunct) distillery that was based in Trois-Rivières, Quebec. The identity uses an elegantly-customized Crayonette DJR for the logo, monogram and perhaps, most importantly, the word “GIN”). Other display text is set vertically in Corfe, and supporting text is set in an all-caps combination of LHF Egyptian and Series A Signage JNL. The identity uses a variety of colors to distinguish the different gin varieties, all set on a label with distinctive stepped corners.

Studio MPLS senior designer Brent Schoepf spoke to The Dieline about the typographic palette:

[Crayonette] DJR all day! Dolly Parton’s album Home for Christmas made us do it. We’re just imitators in this case. All other typography is either from Letter Head Fonts or Jeff Levine, always and forever our default font makers. And a special shoutout to Beasts of England for the embossed type on the side of the bottle, done in ‘Corfe’.

For the 11th edition of Bien Urbain in Besançon, France, the association Juste ici called on us to carry out the communication of the festival. We have produced a series of posters and media that question public displays and their place in the urban landscape. These invitations to appropriate the public space multiplied in the city during the festival. We have also designed a program plan that allows you to see the past and ongoing works present in the city. But also to learn more about the artists and see the many events.

The New Antiquarians is a publication by Phaidon, which

features twenty-two young connoisseurs whose spirited interiors exemplify unorthodox approaches to living with history. (...) The book is an exuberant entry point into the world of antiques, highlighting one-of-a-kind collections and the single-minded collectors whose stories suggest compelling new ways of living with the past.

I worked with the writer, art historian and curator Michael Diaz-Griffith, and the team at Monacelli and Phaidon to craft the full visual world for the book, with special attention paid towards creating an object that felt appropriately historic – without leaning too far into pastiche. The book design had to be thematically consistent enough to link together such a disparate set of interior styles, while still leaving room for each subject’s unique perspective to hold appropriate space.

The result was an eclectic typographic and compositional system that spoke to 19th-century book design, balanced out by an approach to color and illustration that varied from chapter to chapter; each collector in the book was paired with a carefully curated archival spot illustration, border, and palette that reflected their particular visual idiosyncrasies and interests.

The book uses an eclectic mix of type that nods to myriad eras and art movements. Body text is set in Henry, 205TF's take on Garamond, which brings a delicate formality to long blocks of copy (especially when italic), while the chapter headlines, title page, and jacket spine use Albertus in all caps – a nod to the classicism of Roman square capitals. Chapter numbers are set in the Art Deco-inspired Top Tune JNL from Jeff Levine, contributor names in Canada Type’s swashy Monte Cristo, and captions and subheads in the utilitarian Styrene A (Commercial Type).

The book jacket and case further riff on the border motif established for chapter headings, with the former utilizing a reworked public domain illustration from the 19th century to create a cover scene that evokes a stage or a window – supported by a title set in Daylight Fonts’ Ivy DF, with custom ligatures – while the latter takes the frame concept to its logical, slightly absurdist, extreme for the interior embossed hardcover.

Hardcover, 292×241 mm (11.5×9.5 in), 272 pages
Book photography by Brian W. Ferry

Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957 is the catalogue accompanying the 2015 exhibition of the same name. Featuring works by more than ninety artists and extensive archival materials, the exhibition was organized by Helen Molesworth with Ruth Erickson and premiered at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Boston. It then traveled to the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio.

From the ICA/Boston's exhibition page:

A small, experimental liberal arts college founded in 1933, Black Mountain College (BMC) has exerted enormous influence on the postwar cultural life of the United States. Influenced by the utopian ideals of the progressive education movement, it placed the arts at the center of liberal arts education and believed that in doing so it could better educate citizens for participation in a democratic society. It was a dynamic crossroads for refugees from Europe and an emerging generation of American artists. Profoundly interdisciplinary, it offered equal attention to painting, weaving, sculpture, pottery, poetry, music, and dance.

…

Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957 focuses on how, despite its brief existence, BMC became a seminal meeting place for many of the artists, musicians, poets, and thinkers who would become the principal practitioners in their fields of the postwar period. Figures such as Anni and Josef Albers, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg, Elaine and Willem de Kooning, Buckminster Fuller, Ruth Asawa, Robert Motherwell, Gwendolyn and Jacob Knight Lawrence, Charles Olson, and Robert Creeley, among many others, taught and studied at BMC. Teaching at the college combined the craft principles of Germany’s revolutionary Bauhaus school with interdisciplinary inquiry, discussion, and experimentation, forming the template for American art schools. While physically rooted in the rural South, BMC formed an unlikely cosmopolitan meeting place for American, European, Asian, and Latin American art, ideas, and individuals. The exhibition argues that BMC was as an important historical precedent for thinking about relationships between art, democracy, and globalism. It examines the college’s critical role in shaping many major concepts, movements, and forms in postwar art and education, including assemblage, modern dance and music, and the American studio craft movement—influence that can still be seen and felt today.

The catalogue's eclectic typography reflects the radical, utopian, and idiosyncratic pedagogy of Black Mountain College, combining multiple typefaces — many from Jeff Levine — to surprising effect.

The exhibition title is set in a mix of Eckhardt Sans JNL and House Brush from House Industries’ Sign Painter collection. The subtitle is set in Sign Department JNL.

The introductory essay is set in Caslon. Subsequent essays are set in Chalet Book, and catalogue entries are set in Geometric Slabserif 712. A third typeface by Jeff Levine, Moving Van JNL, is used throughout for subheads and catalogue bylines.

Enough is Enough, the campaign to fight the cost-of-living crisis in the UK, produced these posters that could be downloaded, printed and displayed in support of strikes by NHS and postal workers. Elephant was also used for banners and ‘Frontline Workers From Clapped To Sacked’ posters, used at rallies and picket lines.

Alias Elephant is used for slogan type, with Public Notice JNL used for the EIE logotype.

Source: www.absolutetruthpress.com Christoffer Leka, Kaisa Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Front cover featuring lettering based on DIN 1451, Bodoni, and Narrow Roman Stencil JNL

Please note!

Given the abhorrent war Russia is engage in in Ukraine this project is of course cast in a different light than when it was first conceived.

Like many neighbouring nations, Finland too has a troubled past with Russia. At the time of our journey our aim was to try to cast aside past wounds and try to get to know the people. But some three years later old fears and prejudices have unfortunately resurfaced and been proven valid.

For this we are truly sorry, as the people we met during our voyage were anything but the rabid warmongers we now encounter in the daily news. But let us be clear, we do, in no uncertain terms, condemn the unlawful and completely senseless occupation of Ukraine that Russia is presently absorbed in.

Despite this less than cheery disclaimer we hope you can appreciate this project for what it is – an attempt to build bridges instead of burning them. Something we feel the world is in dire need of.

*

It was not a very well thought out idea, but very few adventures start with being meticulously planned. At least our adventures. But at least we had a rough outline of what we would attempt to achieve:

Our aim was to paddle from the small town Kem located on the shore of the White Sea all the way to St Petersburg.

These two places are connected by a number of locks, rivers, and lakes to each other, and upon learning that it was at least theoretically possible to kayak from one to the other we decided it was well worth trying. On the 9th of June 2018 we set sail southward.

But enough about the background, you are here to read about fonts. And we’re getting there. Just one quick thing we need to mention first:

During our voyage Kaisa kept a diary in which she recorded what happened during the trip. When we reached St Petersburg seven weeks later she had filled four small journals with drawings and text.

Source: www.absolutetruthpress.com Christoffer Leka, Kaisa Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Title page, with the custom digitization of Secession’s Cyrillics and LTC Remington Typewriter

In 2020 we published these diaries in book form under the title Русские Дневники (Russian Diaries).

In 2021 our small book was included in the collection of the most beautiful books of the year in Finland. It also received the Hopeahuippu prize (silver) in the annual Finnish design competition Vuoden Huiput.

As for the typefaces, we came upon the Cyrillic version of Secession in an old type specimen book in our library and felt it fit our purposes perfectly. The problem was that we couldn’t find a digitised version of it.

Here our friend Teo Tuominen came in the picture. As an accomplished type designer it took him little time to render beautiful versions of the needed letters from a scan we provided him with.

Source: www.absolutetruthpress.com Christoffer Leka, Kaisa Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

The specimen book on which Teo Tuominen based his digitization

As for the body copy we went with LTC Remington Typewriter, a nice typeface that also came with the much needed Cyrillic characters.

For more information about the project and our journey you can pop over to the project website.

Alongside with the book we also made a poster in which we posed with our expedition flag. It was a horribly cold and miserable photoshoot (you can see the frost on the rocks in the foreground!) but the picture itself turned out really nice. At least we think it did.

(Oh, and for all the real maritime design nerds out there: On the cover of the book, as well as on the poster we spell out “Русские Дневники” in the Soviet Signal Alphabet. Admittedly not a font, but still interesting for letter lovers.)

Source: www.absolutetruthpress.com Christoffer Leka, Kaisa Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Reproduction of an illustrated spread in the original diary, with lettering

Source: www.absolutetruthpress.com Christoffer Leka, Kaisa Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Reproduction of an illustrated spread in the original diary, with lettering

Source: www.absolutetruthpress.com Christoffer Leka, Kaisa Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Poster showing the mounting of our expedition flag, as well as the title “Русские Дневники” spelled out in the Soviet Signal Alphabet