This picture of a typographic freight car is reproduced from an article that appeared in the June 1896 issue of the Inland Printer. It reads:

A Large Shipment of Type
The accompanying illustration was made from a photograph of the first carload of type ever shipped from St. Louis. The shipment was made by the American Type Founders’ Company to their Texas agents, the Scarff & O’Connor Company, of Dallas. The car contained over 30,000 pounds of type, and was turned out with other orders between February 6 and the date shipment was made—March 25. This is pretty good evidence that there is some material being used in the Southwest, and also that St. Louis is well able to supply the demand.

The wagon was used as a self-referential billboard on wheels, with a sign on the side that advertised its contents – out-of-home advertising in the 1890s. The text is rendered in a wide roman with considerable contrast. It’s way too large to be itself typeset and printed, of course. This was a job for a sign painter. Still, I’d like to think that the letterforms were loosely based on a typeface, making this an example of fonts in indirect use.

The typeface that served as the model is De Vinne Extended. At least that’s what the C with the distinctive underbite suggests. In addition to weight and proportion, other shared characteristics include the big-headed R with diagonal leg, the E and F with thin long arms, the u with angled top terminals, and the r with ball terminal. Granted, the S is not really a match – but then again, it just as hard to faithfully copy an S as it is to draw a good one. One more reason that speaks in favor of De Vinne Extended is that this style was a brand-new product at the time, having been introduced the same year.

Carload of type for
TEXAS PRINTERS
Bought by
SCARFF & O’CONNOR CO.,
Dallas, TEXAS
of the
American Type Founders’ Co.,
Via Frisco St. Louis, Mo.

Composite image with specimens for De Vinne Extended from ATF’s Desk Book of Type Specimens from 1900

Cover for Technology and Human Affairs edited by Larry Hickman and Azizah al-Hibri, published in 1981 by the C.V. Mosby Company.

Title is set in Corporate. Author’s names are set in Eurostile.

Designer/s currently unknown.

Source: www.flickr.com Uploaded to Flickr by Joe Clark and tagged with “frizquadrata”. License: All Rights Reserved.

From Scarface to Multi-Surface, from Law & Order to spick & span: Friz Quadrata is the typeface used for Hope’s Perfect cleaning products. It appears for the names on the bottles of the various specialized products. Whether it happened in the kitchen or on granite, Hope’s will render any crime scene stainless again.

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

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

Source: hopecompany.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: hopecompany.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: hopecompany.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: hopecompany.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: hopecompany.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Friz Quadrata is also used for the logo, in stretched caps from the Bold weight.

Illustrated children’s book Goodnight 2 St. Louis is a sequel to Goodnight St. Louis, both riffing off of Goodnight Moon. Fittingly, the book is set entirely in Study, from St. Louis-based type foundry XYZ Type.

Interior detail

Interior detail

Interior detail

Cacti was a “hard seltzer infused with 100% premium blue agave from Mexico”, by rapper Travis Scott with brewing company Anheuser-Busch. The brand was founded in December of 2020. The drink made its debut on March 15 2021 in lime, strawberry, and pineapple flavours. After the Astroworld fallout on November 5, 2021, the seltzer was discontinued in December 2021.

When we took a look at the design and concept of this brand, the logo brings the richness of Froyo Tam’s Ultra Hi-Gloss (available through the Item Label store), a display font released in 2019. It is “inspired by the retro-futurism of the Y2K Aesthetic,” combining the mid-century modernist 1970s and the playfulness of the 1990s. C, A, and T were modified.

Other fonts include Graphik Black – used for taglines, advertising, and a website – and LL Akkurat Mono.

Promotion 1

Promotion 2

Merchandise view (for example shown in this photo: hats, t-shirts, coolers and stickers).

Nostalgia Loop is a newspaper containing two essays about the role of nostalgia in American and global politics. Pulling from the visual language of vintage kids food graphics, the design of the broadsheet seeks to establish a sense of comfort and outmoded longing for a past so familiar in television commercials. However, as the reader progresses, the orderly two-column layout is interrupted by an enclosed poster that asks, “how complacent are we willing to be, steeped in this nostalgia?”.

With a front cover inspired by the densely packed layout of celebrity tabloids and body copy set in Freight Text, the newspaper strives to evoke my personal ambivalence towards this tendency to romanticize the past. The use of Neue Kabel, a geometric sans serif, loosely references Futura to situate the newspaper within a historical conversation about typography’s role in global politics and national identity. Subheadings appear in the austere and narrow Corporate A (URW), contrasting with text in Linotype’s Trade Gothic Next that call out major themes and relevant quotes throughout the newspaper.

Native Foods has been crafting 100% plant-based and 100% craveable dishes since 1994. They pride themselves on bringing the world’s comfort foods home to your community.

The new identity was designed by TOKY. The in-restaurant posters get right to the heart of the Native Foods experience. A warm, inviting colour palette takes inspiration from the chain’s vibrant menu offerings. The simple use of New Kansas balances familiarity with surprising and friendly details. Across the identity, New Kansas is supported by the sans-serif Obviously.

Ludlow typefaces were a staple on North American postcards from the mid 20th century. This one with greetings from St. Louis and depicting the Gaslight Square is no exception: the script is Robert H. Middleton’s Mandate, the sans-serif caps are probably from Tempo, Ludlow’s Futura follower. From the back:

Tiger’s Den – Home of Dixieland Jazz, TV and recording stars Sammy garner and his “Mound City Six”
Carl’s 2 Cent Plain – Famous Pastrami and corned beef sandwiches. A nostalgic and aromatic retreat to the turn-of-the-century delicatessen.
Smokey Joe’s Grecian Terrace – Gaslight Square’s 1st restaurant. Listed Nationally by Gourmet magazine. These attractions have received international recognition – Gaslight Square – in the heart of St. Louis.

Art Grossman Copyright 1962 Topik-Color by Argro Foto & Postcard Co. 62951-B

Draw Down the Moon is the fourth full-length studio album by St. Louis band Foxing. The album art uses a custom typeface designed by Aaron Nandor, with photography by Hayden Molinarolo (taken in Garden of the Gods, IL, Hardin, IL and Muddy, IL). The typeface named Syzygy was also used in the accompanying limited-edition RPG game of the same name, produced by Adam Vass and Conor Murphy, and illustrated by Seth Rodgers.

[More info on Discogs]

Single artwork for “Speak With the Dead (feat. WHY?)”

Single artwork for “If I Believed in Love”

Single artwork for “Where the Lightning Strikes Twice”

Single artwork for “Go Down Together”

Hoodie with the band name in the Syzygy typeface by Aaron Nandor

The Draw Down The Moon RPG was produced by Adam Vass (World Champ Game Co.) and Conor Murphy, with illustration by Seth Rodgers. It pairs the custom typeface by Aaron Nandor with Open Sans.

RPG cloth play-mat and rulebook

Illustrator Noah Jodice used Aglet Mono as the typeface pairing to Scabby the Rat in his zine about inflatables and the fight for union rights.

Noah shared this about the zine and typeface choice:

Seeing Scabby is a zine exploration of the large, inflatable rats used by labor unions during strikes, contract negotiations, and boycotts. Aglet Mono mirrors the slightly overfilled, buoyant nature of the totemic balloons, while pointing towards the bare-bones equity of labor's demands. As a monospace face, it complements the bitmapped images and suggests the underlying codes that construct Scabby as a symbol.

The cover folds out into a poster

The Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer (1877–1962) is one of the world’s most widely read cookbooks. The first edition shown here was self-published in 1931: Rombauer had 3,000 copies produced by A.C. Clayton, a local print shop in St. Louis that hadn’t printed any books before.

The book was illustrated by the author’s daughter Marion (1903–1976), who served as the art director at John Burroughs School at the time. After her marriage in 1932, she was named Marion Rombauer Becker. For the dust jacket, she made a papercut depicting Saint Martha of Bethany, the patron saint of cooking, slaying the dragon-like Tarasque. The design helped to sell around 2,000 copies in the first year. After the Rombauers found a publisher in 1936, The Joy of Cooking has been in print continuously, and has sold more than 20 million copies to this day.

The chromatic letterforms in black, blue and green are custom made, closely following Bifur (Deberny & Peignot, 1929), with overall bolder lines and a wider K than in the typeface. Bifur was designed by Cassandre. The French artist was born in 1901 in Kharkiv (Ха́рків), nowadays the second-largest city in Ukraine, and currently one of the sites of the terrible war.

Hat tip to Alexander Tochilovsky of the Herb Lubalin Study Center, who was born in Odessa.

In 1998, Scribner published a facsimile of the original 1931 edition, with a foreword by Irma’s son, Edgar Rombauer. The added text is set in Champion Gothic.

An adaptation of Jussi Parikka’s essay, “Malware as Operational Art: On the If/Then of Geopolitics and Tricksters” from Het Nieuwe Instituut’s 2019 exhibition, Malware: Symptoms of Viral Infection.

The structure of this book references the skeletal 
syntax of the web and the layered, nested anatomy of HTML. Smaller moves—the unravelling typography 
and cut paper revealing a computer-generated texture on the inner folds—seek to reinforce this theme 
of perceived danger, offering an uneasy, anti-reader friendly experience.

The use of San Francisco (Apple) references the visual language of Apple products, whereas Apple Chancery by Kris Holmes embodies the sprawl of weeds and hints at contagion. A condensed Authentic Sans (by Christina Janus and Desmond Wong) ties this all together, both highlighting important questions and inviting the reader to reconsider what a book can be—as seen in the front cover, which seeks to act as a billboard.

From Berger & Föhr:

Andy Millner is an artist who lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri. He creates works inspired by nature and asks questions akin to the following, “What is our role in the natural world? What is our role in our human-made world? How does the world change when more and more continues to get made?” Andy’s process of “dumbing down” the computer to create digital drawings that are then output in different ways, often as photographs printed directly from a digital file or archival inkjet prints, occasionally with paint later applied, is entirely his own.

We collaborated with Andy to create an appropriately minimal distinctive new identity system to further define his studio art practice. Typographically, the system centers around Gerstner-Programm, initially designed by Karl Gerstner in 1964, and recently recreated and digitalized by Forgotten Shapes as Gerstner-Programm FSL. The intent behind the use of Gerstner-Programm is to deliver the sort of refined nuance necessary to support Andy’s creative output while doing so in an ever so subtle way. We created a similarly unique, highly tactile letterpress, print collateral communication system for Andy to correspond.

The focal point of Andy’s new identity system is his website. Andy’s web experience empowers the viewer to experience all of the detail and nuance inherent to his work while simultaneously providing an opportunity for in-depth, philosophical exploration via text, image, and video.

Zine cover

For his senior capstone project as an architecture student at Washington University in St. Louis, Noah Treviño explored the role of play in design process and thinking. The conceptual project took physical form in a workbook zine and a research booklet (full version here).

Asked about his type choices, Noah wrote:

When deciding on a type pairing for my architecture capstone, Play as Process, I had a few goals in mind. The entire project calls for designers to go back and incorporate a childlike sense of play into their design processes to better tap into creative potential as well as make the design field more accessible to those who might not identify as designers.

I knew what I was putting forward would be text heavy, which is why I settled on IBM Plex Sans for the body type. It is easy to read and looks good at smaller sizes. It doesn't command too much attention and it plays well with others which was important because I wanted something bold for the display type.

After much trial and error, I settled on Ballast for my display type. I found it to be bold and strong, yet playful and inviting. It wasn't too rigid and stuffy, which was extremely important. Play as Process also spent a great deal of time invoking mid-century designers, artists, and architects. Ballast felt like the perfect bridge between then and now. It felt vintage without being cliché.

My favorite examples of Ballast in use in the project were the large quote pages. Seeing the type in the largest instance and engaging with the texture of the images was fun. Working out the placement and content was a challenge I enjoyed when laying out the project development book. In these moments the subtle details of the typeface were very forward, noticeable, and appreciated, all while not taking away from the components on the page. It truly did as the definition of a ballast suggests: stabilize and balance.

Zine spread

Zine spread

Zine spread

Research booklet spread

Research booklet spread

Research booklet spread

Design prompt inspired by Oblique Strategies, generated by a Python script

Design prompt inspired by Oblique Strategies, generated by a Python script

Women have been fighting for suffrage for more than seven decades. The National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) was established in 1890, and became the most mainstream and vocal organization of the United States to push for the national suffrage movement. Elizabeth Cady Stanton became the first president of NAWSA and resigned in 1892 at the age of 77. Her resignation speech “The Solitude of Self” beautifully illustrates the philosophical premise of gender equality, and eloquently presents a classic argument for why women need to be enfranchised by a Sixteenth Amendment.

Solitude of Self is based on this speech. I act as both the editor and meaning maker of the book. The design is inspired by newspapers in 19th and 20th century, thus attempts to give a journalistic presentation of an old but still relevant message to the modern audience—classical yet modern, just like the chosen identity typeface, Ogg (Sharp Type). Ogg’s elegant and outstretching Italic is interspersed with the Regular style, suggesting breakthroughs and a sense of non-conformity. The text of the speech is set in Graphik (Commercial Type), lending simplicity and cleanness as a counterbalance.

The book also includes secondary texts such as captions, facts, and timelines (in the monospaced Courier New) to assist for a better comprehension of the speech.

See the full project on my website.

The title stencil on the book cover is created based on the Ogg typeface, achieved by laser-cut.

We, RYSE, a branding and digital strategy agency based in St. Louis, Missouri, redesigned our website at the beginning of the year in 2020. We wanted to showcase more of the work we did in the past few months on a website that better showed what we as an agency can do. Our original website had variants of Avenir on it, so this wasn't a big jump for us to go to Avenir Next.

Tasked with illustrating a bookplate that represented myself, I drew a lobster reading a tabloid who doesn't seem to mind being boiled alive. My last name means "full of anxiety" so I think this near-death critter and somewhat menacing typeface are fitting. Risograph printed at Risohell in St. Louis, MO.

Michelob, an Anheuser-Busch brand, uses Sloop Script by Lipton Letter Design for the wordmark. On the packaging, it’s paired with a number of different typefaces, some of which appear to be custom(ized).

“Ultra” appears to be custom (see Cristal for a related typeface). The roman with flared stems is Baker Signet, the wide sans is Engravers Gothic or similar.

“Amberbock” is based on Optima Bold. The orange text is set in Minion and Copperplate Gothic. “Michelob Brewing Co.” is unidentified.

The Light pack uses the same typographic ingredients as Amberbock.

Each week during my fall semester I researched various media to create a centralized repository of references, including but not limited to articles, designers and design studios, books I’ve read and various areas of interest that I wanted to explore further. I decided to create a digital version of the repository to explore how a browser can serve as an easily accessible index for my references. By taking time to find references each week, I encouraged myself to maintain a consistent practice of research and exploration that I intend to continue during my last semester of school.

F Grotesk Thin is used throughout.

To see more, visit the Reference Repository website.

Translation of the purely auditory experience of the “Dinosaurs, Dark Matter, and Extra Dimensions” episode from the On Being podcast into a visual experience.

With the airy typographic layout and contrasting body text sizes I wanted to evoke my fascination with the eeriness of the unexpected connections between invisible particles in outer space and our material world. I used the green short sheet pages to create a more interactive and tactile experience comparing a photo of a celestial object to a photo of cells under a microscope—allowing readers to come to their own conclusions about interconnectedness between seemingly disparate parts of the universe.