Loreley & Loretta came up in my recent post about the Feuersprünge book cover featuring Poppl College. Here’s an example of Georg Salden’s design in use. More specifically, it’s Loreley (1977), the variant with swashier caps, featuring an R from the shared set of Zierbuchstaben, i.e. decorative letterforms.

Immer mit der Ruhe! is a book by Danish humorist Willy Breinholst (1918–2009). Original titled Bliv dus med din kone – Bliv dus med din chef – Bliv dus med din bil, it was translated to the German by Dieter J. Jörgensen. The book club edition by Deutscher Bücherbund was published in 1978 under license from Scherz Verlag.

Rudi Carrell (1934–2006) was a Dutch entertainer from Alkmaar, North Holland. After starting his career in the Netherlands, he moved to Germany in the 1960s. There, he succeeded as TV host for game shows and comedy formats, but also had stints as singer and actor. More than three decades on television made Carrell arguably the best-known Dutchman in Germany.

This memoir from 1979 comes with a title that may sound funny – “Give me back my bike” – and the excessive swashes add to the jocular mood. It has a grim background, though. “Eerst mijn fiets terug” (“First my bicycle back”) is a Dutch saying that refers to events in World War II. In 1942, the German occupiers confiscated about 100,000 bicycles from Dutch citizens. In the first two postwar decades, the phrase was used to express a desire for reparations – starting with the beloved bikes – and anti-German sentiment in general. By the time the book came out, it had degenerated into an ironizing joke. From the 1990s onward, “mijn fiets terug” was used mainly as self-mockery – a light-hearted look back at how people had previously viewed the war.

The typeface is a bold display style of the original phototype version of Basta, distinguished from the text version by its narrow proportions. Basta is a design by Georg Salden (b. 1930), who got interested in letterform design through his uncle, Helmut Salden (1910–1996). As an opponent to the Nazis, Helmut fled Germany in 1934, and eventually settled in the Netherlands, not suspecting that the Wehrmacht would soon invade the country. Helmut Salden was arrested in 1942, and condemned to death for desertion. After his sentence was commuted, he survived the war in various prisons and concentration camps. In 1946 he returned to the Netherlands, where he became a prolific book designer and lettering artist. For more about Helmut Salden, see a previous post about the 2018 exhibition at Museum Meermanno.

The jacket design is by Hans Schaumberger who served as Molden’s art director from 1965 to 1982. In his final year with the publisher, he reworked the signet when the name was changed to Molden Seewald.

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Wolfgang “Wolle” Kriwanek (1949–2003) was a blues rock musician from Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, who is best known for popularizing the Swabian dialect in German pop music.

The typeface used on the sleeve of this album from 1980 is GST-Magnet. It’s one of three dozen typeface designs (with a total of 160 styles) drawn by Georg Salden (b. 1930) for the GST-Kreis. Started in 1972, this circle was a collaboration of Salden with a number of phototypesetting studios, initially in (West) Germany, and later also in neighboring countries. At regular meetings, Salden presented proposals for new typeface designs, and worked on those that received the most votes. About once a month, Salden delivered a new typeface design that was then exclusive to the club members. This setup allowed Salden to quit his graphic design practice and make a living as an independent type designer.

Salden’s extraordinary skills and innovative ideas, combined with the exclusivity of his faces, soon attracted plagiarists. Typeshop, a chain of phototypesetting studios that were competing with the GST-Kreis members, wanted to offer a design like Magnet to their customers as well. Typeshop was linked to the Brendel Type Studio, founded by Walter Florenz Brendel (1933–1992), a pioneer of digital type. The studio created their own exclusive typefaces, known as Typeshop Serials. These were typically adaptations of existing classics (Baskerville, Bodoni, Futura, Times – you name it), expanded to cover a range of weights, plus outline and shadow styles.

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Magnet (TypeManufactur’s digital version, first two lines) compared to SoftMaker’s Pasadena Serial Heavy (third line) and ExtraBold (fourth line). Note how in Pasadena, S has the same basic shape as s, e has a sharp corner, the i dot is heavier, and the terminal of r is flatter. Other differences include the shorter center of w/W.

In some ethically more problematic cases, though, the adopted designs weren’t old classics from bygone centuries or at least from the days of metal type, but rather very recent designs. Pasadena Serial is a case in point: made in 1974 (according to some sources that I haven’t verified), it’s a blatant ripoff of Magnet that Salden had made available to his partners just a year earlier. The unauthorized copy was expanded to seven numbered weights. Pasadena’s two boldest weights are roughly equivalent to the original Magnet. Typeshop introduced some superficial differences, apparently to make it legally incontestable. Some of the Typeshop fonts are being sold in digital form to this day, by various outlets including The Quick Brown Fox, TypeShop Collection, and Softmaker. If you want to do the right thing, avoid Pasadena and go with the original instead. A digital version of Magnet is available on request from TypeManufactur.

[More info on Discogs]

Cover of the English-language edition of Soviet Chess School by Alexander Kotov and Mikhail Yudovich, translated by Lev Kurilov and published by Raduga Publishers in Moscow in 1983.

The typography appears to combine two similar interpretations of De Vinne. The authors’ names are the easy part: They are set in Hawthorn by Mike Daines, released by Letraset in 1968 in a single weight.

The bolder style used for the title looks like a member of the Basta series, started by Georg Salden in 1972. At least that’s the only typeface in this genre with such an angled e that I’m aware of. The heaviest weights named 3.6 and 3.9 come particularly close: In addition to the e, details like the s/S with long, pointed serifs or the t with flat top are a match, too. Basta has a ball terminal on the lowercase c. However, its uppercase C has the same form as seen here, so maybe the c was redrawn to match the C (and the c in Hawthorn). The T with upward-pointing serifs (like in Hawthorn, but unlike in Basta) could be explained in the same way. The descending v and t, the shortened h ascender, as well as the o’s with the knight pieces in place of counters are obviously modified. That’s why I tend to say it’s lettering based on Basta. In any case, Salden’s design comes closer than Brendel’s De Vinne Serial 7, which is digitally available as (TS) Denver (Serial) Black, and might have been around already in 1983, too. I can’t rule out the possibility that the title lettering is a manual extrapolation of Hawthorn. In that case, the similarities to Basta would be coincidental.

Basta was originally developed for the GST-Kreis, a subscription model with new display typefaces added on a monthly basis. These were exclusive to the members – a number of phototypesetting companies. TypeManufactur’s digital Basta focuses on the text styles. It has Leicht, Buch, and halbfett weights, each with matching Kursiv styles (and roman small caps for the two lighter weights), plus a fett. Its design is different from the original numbered Bastas.

GST-Basta 3.9, the heaviest weight of the Basta series, with swash alternates. Shown in a catalog by German phototypesetting company Stulle from 1985.

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LP front cover.

Nesthäkchen is a series of children/teenage girl novels written by Else Ury (1877–1943) in the 1910s and 1920s. In 1984, following the success of a TV adaptation for ZDF’s Christmas series, Deutscher Bücherbund published a new edition in three volumes, each with two Nesthäkchen stories, acccompanied by an audio drama version of the first two novels on the subsidiary record label Sonocord.

The covers of the double LP and two audio cassettes were designed by Fritz Blankenhorn, with illustration by Medard Varsányi. The title typeface is Loreley, which was used for the book covers, too.

Loreley is an unconnected monolinear script with slight slope. It’s one of the more than 40 families (with 200+ styles) that Georg Salden (b. 1930) designed for the GST-Kreis. This collaboration with a group of phototypesetting studios was started in 1972. Every month, Salden came up with a new typeface design that was exclusive to the club members. This arrangement allowed Salden to leave his work as commercial artist behind, start working full time on fonts, and make a living as independent type designer. (In 2017, David Jonathan Ross – unknowingly – revived this idea for the digital age, and launched the Font of the Month Club.)

Photo: Florian Hardwig. License: CC BY-NC-SA.

Some of the variants that Loreley and Loretta offered, compiled from samples shown in a 1985 catalog by Stulle, one of the members of the GST-Kreis. Located in Stuttgart, Stulle was probably the typesetting service that Blankenhorn used.

Top: Loretta leicht; Loretta. Middle: Loreley leicht; Loreley with swash alternates. Bottom: Loreley leicht with swash alternates; Loreley Shaded with swash alternates.

The ambitious schedule didn’t allow Salden to come up with completely new and original designs every single month. He was relieved to learn that the members also accepted weight, contour, or shadow variations of existing designs. GST Loreley was drawn in two weights plus outline and shaded styles. The latter is the style used for the Nesthäkchen covers. GST Loretta is a variant with simpler caps. Furthermore, there’s a number of decorative swash alternates that can be used both with Loreley and Loretta, some of which can be seen in this use, too. While several of the Georg Salden Types made between the 1970s and 1990s have since been made available for contemporary use from Salden’s TypeManufactur, Loreley and Loretta are still waiting to be digitized.

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LP back cover.

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The gatefold has an outlined version of the cover illustration, allowing the listeners to color it in themselves – an opportunity that the owner of this copy happily seized (at least for the right half).

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Vol. 1 of the cassette version, with Nesthäkchen und ihre Puppen.

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Vol. 2 is about Nesthäkchens erstes Schuljahr.

The book covers replace Varsányi’s illustration with photographs. In addition to the descending swash k, this setting also makes use of Loreley’s decorative alternate for h. The secondary text is set in a phototype version of Bembo.

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Vol. 1: Nesthäkchen und ihre Puppen / Nesthäkchens erstes Schuljahr.

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Vol. 2: Nesthäkchen im Kinderheim / Nesthäkchens Backfischzeit.

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Vol. 3: Nesthäkchen fliegt aus dem Nest / Nesthäkchen und ihre Küken.

Exhibition poster / front of flyer.

Huis van het Boek | Museum Meermanno is a Hague-based museum dedicated to “the hand-written and printed book of the past and present.” In 2018, the museum opened a small but elaborate retrospective of the work of book designer Helmut Salden (1910–1996). The exhibition was named lettertekenaar en boekverzorger (“letterdrawer and book designer”) in Dutch, and “a prolific lettering artist” in English – all lowercase in both languages. In a room on the top floor of the museum, the prolific career of Salden was presented by showing correspondence, sketches and comps for book covers from his archive.

For the exhibition poster and flyer for the exhibition, Antwerp design studio Catapult chose the flared Brasil Medium, using its lively tabular figures. This typeface was designed and published by Salden’s nephew Georg Salden in 1973 as a headline typeface, and later expanded as a text type family in multiple weights.

The exhibition and its catalogue were designed by Catapult and Anke Broeren, using a different combination of typefaces. Trinité by Bram de Does is used from the lettering on the walls to headlines and English-language body text in the catalogue. A condensed style of Fakt by Thomas Thiemich (not yet released as a retail typeface at the time) is used for Dutch text in the catalogue and on the cards with explanatory notes and information in the exhibition display cabinets.

The exhibition catalogue cover repurposes a book cover by Salden, replacing his lettering by what looks like Albertus Nova, slightly modified to obtain a lowered contrast.

Flyer, verso.

Entrance of the exhibition room, opening night.

Quote by Salden: “my need for order and subtlety in my work arises from the chaos in my life.”, set in Trinité No. 2 Italic. The No. 2 series comes with medium length ascenders and descenders.

Exhibition cover.

Spread from the exhibition catalogue.

Hamburg-based branding agency Peter Schmidt Group has used Georg Salden’s Polo as its identity typeface since at least as far back as 2004. This website design launched in 2014.

Ali Mitgutsch invented the first Wimmelbücher in the 1960s. A wimmelbook is a special kind of illustrated book, richly detailed and mostly large in format. Das Riesenbilderbuch is a collection of drawings by Ali Mitgutsch in the format of 61×41.2 cm.

For the title a slightly condensed headline version of Brasil is used, which was only available for phototypesetting back then.

Videon is an experimental typeface which consists of only straight lines. This little booklet contains a short story by Clifford D. Simak. Typeset in 6pt Videon. Still amazingly legible.

See more of the typeface:
http://www.typemanufactur.com/specials/videon.html
http://www.typemanufactur.com/eng/fonts/videon/overview.html