A connoisseur of M.F. Benton’s work was inspired to combine the capitals of Wedding Text with the classic (not necessarily fitting) American Text. A sprinkling of Bernhard Modern rounds off this stroll through the ATF catalog. (The few bits of Myriad probably were not a deliberate choice, and therefore not worth mentioning).

Most likely, this label has been designed in-house at Sallandt – Alte Münsterländer Kornbrennerei & Liqueurdistillerie GmbH, however I cannot find definitive proof of this (but other labels in their collection look remarkably similar).

Anna Monika Jost (b. 1944) is one of the many Swiss-born graphic designers who went to work in Milan during the 1950s and 1960s – this is a story that has been largely documented (notably at Zurich’s Museum für Gestaltung) and spawned a remarkable body of work by Jost and her colleagues Lora Lamm, Max Huber, Bruno Monguzzi, Walter Ballmer, etc.

Working for Italian brands such as Fiat and Olivetti, Jost found the right balance between Swiss constructive rigour, informed by Konkrete Kunst, and Italian playfulness in this 1966 poster for a travelling exhibition of Olivetti’s products. The typefaces used here are Helvetica (obviously) and, quite unexpectedly, News Gothic (for the isolated letters and numbers inside the round dots).

Jost was, alongside Bruno Monguzzi and Batia Suter, a recipient of the Swiss Grand Award for Design in 2025.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art, in collaboration with design studio Gretel, rebuilt its identity with the goal of putting the institution in direct conversation with the city that surrounds it. Typography is the primary device for achieving this. The type palette mainly works on two levels: outside-and-inside, or community-and-institution.

Inspired by Philadelphia’s rich visual texture of storefronts, street vendors, and murals, the vernacular type palette brings the voice of Philly into the museum and injects the identity system with contrast and spontaneity. The current library is curated (exemplified by the likes of Shatter, Cooper Black, and Balloon), but it is designed to continue growing over time. Each of these display typefaces can be used on various seasonal activations, or specifically assigned to exhibitions or departmental roles. ITC Pioneer was used for the recent exhibition The Time is Always Now, a survey of contemporary Black and African diasporic figurative art. Purple Haze is the designated typeface for PMA Members, and Megazoid is used for PMA Kids.

On the other hand, the institutional typographic voice serves an evergreen role: echoing the museum’s classical character while embodying Philadelphia’s industrial sensibility. The core typeface, Fairmount Serif—named for the Fairmount neighborhood—was custom-drawn by Ryan Bugden after a study of Philadelphia’s typographic history. Searching for a balance between the industrial structure of 1930s American sans-serifs and a classical features brought Hess Neobold forward as a key reference. Its designer Sol Hess attended PMSIA—the precursor to the museum—and later succeeded Frederic Goudy as Philadelphia-based Lanston Monotype’s type director. Fairmount Serif evolves the Hess Neobold model while incorporating more contemporaneous industrial cues. It remains relatively neutral alongside the museum’s broad palette of display faces while providing a distinct, authoritative voice of its own. Fairmount Serif was also used as a starting point in rendering the various institutional logos.

For the more workhorse level, Klarheit Grotesk serves as the museum’s body text typeface. It is set at small sizes across branding, materials, signage, and exhibition text.

See more images in Gretel’s case study.

Mockups of exhibition catalogs

Banners.

Seasonal program.

Front cover, featuring Allegro (import revision; Ludwig & Mayer, 1936) for Berry’s name and the album title. “With” set in News Gothic (regular; ATF, 1908) or a follower. Catalog number (bold) and “Hi—Fidelity¬ (regular) set in Spartan (Linotype) or similar.

Still of Berry with his guitar taken from his performance in the independent film Rock, Rock, Rock! (1956).

After School Session is rockman Chuck Berry’s debut LP on Chess Records, the label’s second after the compilation/soundtrack album for the film Rock, Rock, Rock! (which Berry and two other Chess acts appeared in, resulting in a still from the movie being used on the cover). The album contained three previous hit singles, with “School Days” topping the Billboard R&B Best Sellers chart – after battling Elvis Presley’s “All Shook Up” in the Jockeys and Juke Box charts for three weeks – and reaching #3 on the Hot 100.

Though uncredited, the cover was presumably designed by Don Bronstein, Chess’ in-house art director from around 1955 to his death in 1968.

Back cover featuring artist and album name in Tempo Heavy (Ludlow, 1931). Smaller text including the track listing (bold with writer credits in regular), liner notes (regular), address (bold) and catalog number and “HIGH FIDELITY” (bold) all seem to be set in Spartan, a follower of Futura distinguished by the two-story a.

“Like to Get to Know You Well” is a 1984 single by English singer Howard Jones. From Wikipedia:

The sleeve carried the motto “Dedicated to the original spirit of the Olympic Games” as the single was released at the start of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. The extended version, subtitled “international remix”, features Jones singing in English, German and French.

This international aspect carried over to the single’s sleeve design, where the uncredited designer depicts the title in a variety of (badly translated) languages and fonts. The artist name as well as English and French titles use Berling Bold. The Dutch title uses News Gothic Extra Condensed and the Spanish one Americana Extra Bold. The German is in Beton Bold Condensed, while the Japanese is in Gothic MB101. Italian is Futura Demibold. The Greek is in Eurostile Extended Black, with alterations made to create some faux-Greek glyphs. Finally, the Swedish uses Plantin.

[More info on Discogs]

“Bounce Right Back” on the back cover uses Berling as well.

A later release of the single replaced the badly translated Japanese with a slightly less bad translation, and replaced the Swedish at the bottom with “12″ International Remix” in Helvetica Bold.

CD release

This is the album cover for Siyah Işıklar (“Black Lights”), the fourth studio album by Turkish pop music artist, composer, and lyricist Kayahan (1949–2015), released in 1989. The album features Kayahan performing new songs as well as tracks previously covered by other artists. It was popular upon its release. It was released on CD and cassette, with the cover being essentially the same for both, featuring Van Dijk for the title. When the album was reissued on vinyl in 2015, ITC Quorum was replaced by Friz Quadrata.

[More info on Discogs]

MC release

Vinyl release

Toulouse Olympique Aviation Club was founded on October 4, 1944, through a
merger of Toulouse Olympique XV and the Omnisport Aviation Club Toulousain. Since March 6, 1990, the club from the capital of France’s southern Occitanie region is known under the name Toulouse Olympique Aérospatiale Club (TOAC).

This membership card from 1945/1946, issued to Joseph Goulounes (1924–2001), features the club’s emblem with a winged dragon and a compass rose.

“Membre actif” is set in Elegant-Grotesk licht, an all-caps inline version of Stempel’s Futura follower, Elegant-Grotesk. The specific version likely is Universelles éclairées, a local copy sold by the Dutreix foundry in Limoges.

The plain sans has German roots as well: it’s Simplex, a variant of Berthold-Grotesk with a monocular a, produced by Fonderie Olive in Marseille.

The italic serif used for “Année” is Cheltenham with the alternate swash A, available in France from Fonderie Caslon. The wide grot used for the club’s name is yet unidentified.

The headline mixes Romanisch Kursiv No. 20 with Koch-Antiqua fett. The latter is used with both forms for s, but the former isn’t. The question mark is added from Cooper Black, while the smaller copy is set in Futura.

This 1931 group tours brochure was issued by the MER – Mitteleuropäisches Reisebüro G.m.b.H. – of Berlin. The brochure gives details of organised holiday tours across Europe, by train and ship, as well as an extensive tours of the USA, out via the HAPAG line and returning on the Norddeutschen Lloyd for a cool 2,800 RM. The brochure also has numerous adverts for resorts, hotels and travel companies.

The various adverts, a selection of which I have scanned here, are also interesting from a typographical and design standpoint. Many are in the very latest German ‘style’ and feature some interesting and often relatively new typefaces. This advert, with a variety of typefaces and a decorative border asks “Kennen Sie schon die volkstümlichen Gesellschaftsfahrten des MER?” (“Are you already familiar with the popular group trips offered by MER?”) It gives a list of destinations within Germany and abroad as described elsewhere in the brochure.

MER was formed as a Central European Travel Agency in Berlin in 1917 and grew to include the travel interests of the Austrian and Hungarian railways. Many of its services were similar to those of say, Thomas Cook, in the UK. The company was heavily implicated in the crimes of the National Socialist era and in post-war years the company, in both East and West Germany, underwent several complex reorganisations but survives under the name of DER Travel.

“Shakespeare’s hometown is the quiet, picturesque market town of Stratford-upon-Avon in the county of Warwickshire.” Motor can be seen in early use, featuring a non-standard narrow R.

“Don’t miss a chance to visit Lake Lucerne and its eight mountain railways during your trip to Switzerland”
Two weights of Memphis plus a drop cap from Schaefer-Versalien.

Schaefer-Versalien and all-caps Memphis for “Lucerne Lido, the Swiss lakeside resort”

“Finland – the idyllic land of a thousand lakes. A new travel destination!” More Motor – with a narrow alternate N.

Adverts for the San Marco Schiffahrts-Gesellschaft Venedig and Palace Hotel in Tunis, Tunisia. “San Marco” shows Motor’s narrow N again, and features yet another alternate glyph, this time for S. “Dalmatien” is in Berthold Block. The description of the hotel uses Koch-Antiqua.

Adverts for Jadranska Plovdibda D.D. Sušak and Dubrovačka Parobrodarska Plovidba, with several Futura weights and three sizes of Neuland

The Chantier Le Cœur was a shipyard in Lesconil, in southern Finistère, active from 1905 to 1980. It bears witness to the traditional artisanal activity of a small Breton port in the 20th century and has held the designation of “Port of Heritage Interest” since 2018. This former shipyard was converted into an eco-museum in 2019 and is managed by the Bag Leskon association.

The museum showcases the original buildings, collections, and equipment, and takes its name from the shipyard’s principal owner, Alain Le Cœur (pictured in the first photo).

View of the antique tools on display in the museum’s showcases.

View of the antique tools on display in the museum’s showcases.

View of the antique tools on display in the museum’s showcases.

Fañch Le Henaff, creator of the Brito typeface, posing in front of the museum entrance.

More uses of Brito!

Na Pancada Desvairada is an album featuring compositions and arrangements based on melodies recorded by the Brazilian modernist Mário de Andrade during his ethnographic travels through Northeast Brazil between 1928 and 1938. The physical media for the record is a disc accompanied by a 120-page bilingual publication presenting the group’s extensive research on this material.

The client expressed the desire to include a typewriter-style typeface in the visual identity, referencing the documentary archive of Mário de Andrade that inspired the album. For this purpose, Courier was selected.

The project’s visual identity emerges from a graphic-literary investigation, beginning with the diamond shape on the cover, repeated as a triptych across the back cover and inner flap. In addition to alluding to the symbol of the Brazilian flag – in the same orientation as it appears on the cover of Pau Brasil (1925) by Oswald de Andrade – it also references the harlequin’s diamond-patterned costume, a recurring image in Pauliceia Desvairada (1922), both in the poems and in the cover design of its first edition.

By articulating these symbols, the art direction sought to create a contemporary graphic expression grounded in the dialogue between Mário de Andrade’s modernist work and the Brazilian popular musical culture he studied.

Art direction and graphic design by Flora Milanez, with photography by Fernando Banzi.

Looking through my way-back files, I found that I used Letraset’s Pump for a second logo project in the early 1970s. I used Pump because it was an absolute natural for combining the three lowercase initials, c s b. They flow one into the other in a satisfying way. In my mind's eye I saw it further as a three-dimensional tubular metal sculpture set on a patch of lawn in front of the bank, but that was not in the cards.

Advertising campaign for Peruvian TV company and network Panamericana Televisión. This campaign highlighted the then new programming for the second half of that year. The wordmark is set in Astra, the body text in Univers, and the headline text in Beton.

See Arkiv Peru for an uncropped (albeit smaller) image of this advert.

Front cover, featuring Short's name and the title set in Serendipity (condensed). Author tagline set in Volta (halbfett; Bauer, 1956); “Formerly” tagline set in News Gothic (regular; ATF, 1908). “A Fawcett Gold Medal Book” presumably set in Grotesque #9 (italic; Stephenson Blake, 1949).

Photo-Lettering's Benguiat Serendipity (1965) in rare use – rare compared to its fruitier, more ornamented brethren – on the fourth(?) edition cover of Barren Land Showdown (Fawcett Book #R2177, first published in 1951; originally titled Barren Land Murders) by American western author Luke Short, who might have taken his pen name from the Old West gunfighter.

From the back cover:

A hard-hitting story of the Northwest, where the chill winds couldn't cool hot tempers—where the whole Territory wasn't big enough to hold two men...

The book is set in the Northwest Territories, meaning not Colorado; even so, it still gets by as a western.

Abilene FLF

The second season of Batman: The Animated Series (or The Adventures of Batman & Robin, as it was temporarily known) differs from the first season both in only consisting 20 episodes (versus the first season’s 65), and in using digital fonts (where the first season used dry transfer lettering).

Times Bold

Times New Roman Bold (compare the counter of the R in “Trial” to that of the one in “A Bullet for Bullock” above)

Flambard (or Studio?), heavily squeezed

Murray Hill

Unidentified

Abilene FLF

Times Bold

Chevalier

Univers 49

Filmotype Hudson

Chevalier

Ticonderoga

Plakette

ITC Ronda

Florentine

Stencil

Ad Lib

Helvetica

Premier Lightline

[More info on Discogs]

We’ve seen an album by British pianist Nick Nicholas here before, featuring the elusive Gadget. Two years later, in 1975, Nicholas followed up with the two-part Honky Tonk Piano Party. The covers represent two interpretations of the same theme, both with a photograph by Frank Youngs (from the same shoot?).

For the type, designer Jack Levy went all in on the party theme with a huge helping of Stilla Caps. Zoom in on the details: this time, the dash isn’t a repurposed tilde, but rather made from the right part of the ampersand?! H got a gratuitous ball terminal (because there can’t be too many ball terminals in Stilla), and both numerals were customized (the numerals drawn by François Boltana are non-ligning which makes them a little boisterous when used in all caps).

The secondary typefaces are Albertus and Kabel, respectively. The former is used with two extra-wide W’s that appear to be pieced together from V’s – did Levy run out of the required letters on his dry transfer sheets?

[More info on Discogs]

Kölsche Mösche (“The Cologne Sparrows” in the local dialect) is an alias used during carnival by the Quartettvereinigung Rheinland 1919. The men’s choir led by Heinz Eckert (1929–2015) recorded a couple of albums in the 1970s. This one, released in 1975 by Colorit and Music for Pleasure, comes with a cover photograph depicting Katz Castle with the famous Lorelei rock in the background.

The title is presented in François Boltana’s Stilla Caps (Letraset, 1974), with tight letterspacing and tildes used in place of dashes. The uncredited designer used those forms for the letters E, L, M and N that are not included in the digitizations by Linotype, Scangraphic and Elsner+Flake.

[More info on Discogs]

Letragraphica sheet LG1836 with Stilla Caps in 72pt. The alternates and extras are absent from the available digital versions.

From Wikipedia:

Dangerous Woman is the third studio album by American singer-songwriter Ariana Grande. It was released through Republic Records on May 20, 2016. […]

The cover artwork of Dangerous Woman features Grande wearing a latex bunny mask while portraying a seductive image in contrast to the covers of her previous albums. In an interview with Chris Martins for Billboard, Grande explained that the cover was inspired by her alter ego, “Super Bunny”, stating: “The Super Bunny is my superhero, or supervillain—whatever I’m feeling on the day. Whenever I doubt myself or question choices I know in my gut are right—because other people are telling me other things—I’m like, ‘What would that bad bitch Super Bunny do?’ She helps me call the shots.”

The design featuring Walbaum and Satisfaction is by The Young Astronauts. For over five years, the agency “has spearheaded all-encompassing 360° campaigns for pop sensation Ariana Grande spanning music videos, album and single art, merchandise, digital experiences and beyond.”

[More info on Discogs]

Merhaba Gençler ve Her Zaman Genç Kalanlar (“Hello Young People and Those Who Always Remain Young”) is an influential album by Cem Karaca.

Karaca (1945–2004) was a Turkish rock musician and one of the most important figures in the Anatolian rock movement. The album was released in 1987, coinciding with Karaca’s return to Türkiye after spending eight years in exile in Germany for political reasons.

The album typography shows the title in Brush Script. The artist’s name below uses ITC Lubalin Graph in all caps and with several alternate glyphs.

[More info on Discogs]

Thalia (1894) and two widths of Alternate Gothic (1903) all used in all caps for the cover of a 1966 album by the Toronadoes. The release on Design Records includes interpretations of popular tunes such as “A Taste of Honey”, “Zorba the Greek”, and “The Lonely Bull”.

[More info on Discogs]

Heavenly by Nia is a skin care brand founded by Niamarie Vargas. From Jakarta-based design studo GL*TCH:

Heavenly by Nia was created to help teens understand their skin, embrace these changes with confidence, and celebrate diversity. This brand speaks their language—through bold, digital-native visuals that resonate with their daily lives. The theme of change and inclusivity is reflected in our dynamic typography, blending multiple typefaces to symbolize individuality.

One of the most prominent typefaces in this visual identity is OffBit, a typeface created by Power Type Foundry. OffBit brings a distinct character inspired by bitmap structures—mapping pixels into forms such as dots, rings, plus signs, stars, crosses, bars, lines, and tilts. Within the Heavenly by Nia brand, OffBit functions to amplify the message of courage and diversity through letterforms that feel unconventional, digitally energetic, and instantly recognizable to teens who grow up surrounded by screens. Its modular yet flexible character reflects how every individual is unique in their own way—perfectly aligning with the brand's spirit of celebrating change and difference.

The logo combines a modified TAN Daisy with Silenter and Ambroise. Fonts that are used for single glyphs in the product names seem to include Allura, Times New Roman Italic, and Brush Script. On the website, OffBit is supported by Instrument Sans.