When Typographic House advertised their typesetting services – and specifically Gill Sans Extra Bold – in the January 1969 issue of Art Direction, they adopted a quote by Franklin D. Roosevelt. It’s taken from a speech held on April 21, 1938, when FDR addressed 4,000 members of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Typographic House was “the finest typesetter in Boston” [Richard Sheaff] and “the largest type house in New England” [Steve Jackaman], with offices in Boston, Providence, and Harford. Founded in 1938 by Michael Brotman (c.1907–2002), “Typo House” was led by James H. Moore (1932–2023) from 1967 until his retirement in 1991. In 1984, Moore acquired the company together with Peter Brotman (1941–2016), the founder’s son.

This is the 1977 logo and dust jacket for a book published by Dr. Rzepela. The name of the author is in ITC Korinna Bold.

Zip Diet was created by Dr. Stanley J. Rzepela, who opened the Zip Diet Center in Boston. The logo started with a font which I cannot remember and have been unable to track down now.

Above is one of a dozen or so small space ads, each having weight-related copy with a twist. The slab serif used here is ITC Lubalin Graph.

A poster that shows visually which foods are allowed in Phases 1, 2 and 3 of the diet. The numerals are from ITC Firenze.

Decorative repeat

Stationery, foil stamped on ribbed paper

The Boston Book Festival rebrand in 2016 was designed by Elizabeth Carter at Corey McPherson Nash, using Mallory by Frere-Jones Type.

The annual festival is a day-long celebration of literature and arts centered in Copley Square, Boston. Founded in 2009, the festival features authors from around the world and has an approximate attendance of 30,000 each year.

From Elizabeth Carter’s portfolio website:

The festival rebranding included design concepts for a new identity with a flexible and adaptable logo. The visual approach to the logo took inspiration from the recognizable previous identity system, from book design, and from typography found in Boston. The full project included the design and production of promotional materials for the festival, responsive website, merchandise, venue signage and materials, a program guide and a promotional social media campaign.

L.A. Burdick Chocolates is an artisan chocolate company founded in 1987 by Swiss-trained chocolatier Larry Burdick, known for helping introduce fine, cocoa-forward chocolates to the United States. Their website features Octave Display in Regular and Italic for the primary typography with Commuters Sans being used in all caps for the navigation, buttons, and small headlines.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s Silmarillion was first published by Allen & Unwin in London (with Hawthorn for the jacket typography). Shown here is the first U.S. edition, by Houghton Mifflin, with cover art by Tolkien himself. The display typeface is Rubens.

Note how the J towers a little over the other capitals because its base was aligned to the line of the frame, instead of letting it overshoot.

The typography on the spine and inside the book follows the British precursor, with Perpetua and Imprint.

[More info on ISFDB]

Designer Rory Overdorff used Newsagent and Blackbike from Typeverything, Fairley Five and Eight from Ephemera Fonts, and LHF Chicago Script from Letterhead Fonts to create a bold and contemporary bottle design for Kennedy’s Irish Whiskey that emphasizes strong typographic presence.

The typeface’s structured yet expressive forms bring clarity and confidence to the layout, allowing the label to communicate directly and elegantly. The clean composition and modern letterforms of Newsagent anchor the visual identity, making typography the hero of the piece.

Vital CxNs is a Boston-based nonprofit redesigning systems of care by centering community leadership. Their refreshed brand and website, designed by TART, position them as a credible leader in systems change while staying grounded in community leadership.

Typography plays a central role in achieving this balance. The updated identity uses Lazzer Bold and Medium by Displaay Type Foundry. Lazzer’s geometric structure and sharp cuts bring a contemporary boldness that signals expertise and authority, while its softer curves and rhythm keep the tone approachable and human.

The type system works in tandem with an expanded color palette, bespoke illustrations, and flexible templates, enabling Vital CxNs to communicate consistently across audiences — from funders and public agencies to grassroots partners and community members. Their refreshed brand and website, strengthen their credibility with institutions while amplifying their role as a convener of grassroots partners.

In this 1974 book, Whitney Balliett (1926–2007) profiles Alec Wilder and nine related artists. The texts were originally published in The New Yorker for which Balliett served as a jazz critic and book reviewer over a period of forty-seven years.

The uncredited designer used ITC Busorama Bold for the main title. It appears with several of its alternates: the compact variants for E and F, the R with concave leg, and the top-heavy forms for S and &. Busorama is supported by Kabel Light.

Back cover. Happy World Ampersand Day! The photo credit for Geoffrey James uses a light weight of Venus Extended with a wide J.

Nixie is a zero calorie, zero sugar beverage brand. It uses Around A alongside Area. The logo is probably custom. The script used for some of the flavor names and the condensed sans on the cans are unidentified.

Founded by Nicole Dawes in 2019, Nixie’s declared mission is to “eliminate sugar, single-use plastic bottles, and toxic forever-chemicals”.

In 2024, Boston’s landmark World Trade Center was transformed into Commonwealth Pier, a property owned by Pembroke in the heart of the city’s rapidly evolving Seaport District.

The location offers unprecedented access to the city’s waterfront, accessible from all areas of the city. It required a contemporary visual identity program that would celebrate the property, honor its legacy, and connect with audiences from across the region.

One Design created Seaport Sans, a family of modular display typefaces inspired by the architecture of the campus properties.

SSPier takes inspiration from turn-of-the-century architectural elements found throughout the pier structure that stretches out into Boston Harbor. The building has industrial origins, originally functioning as a railway shipping hub. The bespoke modular typeface draws inspiration from the ornate trusses and columns unearthed during its renovation.

SSHotel and SSTower are variants that embrace decorative architectural motifs from the newer hotel and office tower properties found on the mainland.

Staff Wide from R-Typography is used throughout the system as a functional anchor, embracing its no-nonsense, utilitarian aesthetic to link the property’s communal future with its functional roots in Boston’s industrial past.

The color palette exists in harmony with the tones of the Atlantic Ocean and the broader eastern seaboard.

Branding applications for the Seaport Hotel, a hospitality destination on the Commonwealth Pier campus

Commonwealth Pier social media

Construction barrier signage for Pembroke Properties, utilized during property renovations

Seaport Sans extensions for campus wayfinding and iconography

Historical research into the property’s industrial roots revealed structural patterns, that served as visual influence for Seaport Sans.

Seaport Sans, a modular display typeface inspired by the industrial trusses found throughout Commonwealth Pier during renovation

Seaport Sans: a modular display typeface for the Commonwealth Pier property and campus

Seaport Sans, in all of its modular expressive glory

Unique variants of Seaport Sans were developed for adjacent properties on the campus. Architectural elements of each building inspired the variants, such as the circular motif found on the exterior of the Seaport Hotel.

Seaport Sans Hotel (SSHotel), inspired by the architectural motifs found on the exterior of the Seaport Hotel.

Various applications featuring SSHotel

Seaport Hotel applications

Boston-based studio Butter has designed a new identity for Rosc Venture Capital:

Rosc is a venture capital company built on a 40-year family legacy, and they needed a brand identity to catapult them into the digital age. Butter determined their differentiators at a time when VC was struggling, building a brand that showcases their particular approach to investing; one rooted in academic rigor and decades of entrepreneurial experience.

The typefaces used for the new look are Ivar Text and Headline from Letters from Sweden, Store Norske Maleri from Skriftkompani, and Stratos by Production Type.

On November 16th, Alicia Ostriker will be reading luminous poems from her 20th collection, The Holy & Broken Bliss, as part of the Stanton Reading Series. The poster for the reading event in New York features an early use of Bitzer. James Plattner’s display roman was released just last month through Future Fonts. The secondary fonts ate Aperçu Mono and PP Monument.

In April 2023, poet Michael Waters read from his book Sinnerman, published that year with Etruscan Press. The poster for the reading event pairs two all-caps typefaces, Marvin Visions by Mathieu Triay and a condensed style of Sequoia by Rachel Kick. The design takes advantage of the fact that in Marvin Visions, the author’s initials form a near-perfect mirror image when stacked on top of each other.

When I write a poem, I am crawling into the dark. Or else I am an aperture. Something needs to be put into language, and it chooses me. I invite such things.

Earlier this year, poet Alicia Ostriker read from two of her new works appearing in 2024. The poster for the reading event takes up the aperture motif from the quote. The typography to go with it combines three different sans serifs. The main one is Swell, “a new take on the the timeless classic, Kabel Black” by Break Maiden. It’s supported by ITC Avant Garde Gothic (bottom left) and James Sobol’s all-caps Slow Grade (top right).

Visual identity for Going to Ground, using DaVinci by Virgile Flores, Exposure by Federico Parra Barrios, and ABC Diatype by Dinamo.

Description of the project by The Greenway, a contemporary public park in Boston:

Going to Ground is a site-specific sculpture from artist Larissa Rogers that engages with the life of Zipporah Potter Atkins. In 1670, Potter Atkins became the first-known Black woman to own a home in Boston on land which is now cared for by The Greenway. Her history was brought to light by Dr. Vivian Johnson, Professor Emerita of Boston University, after 6 years of archival research.

Fakt is the ICA Boston’s house typeface, and was chosen for the title treatment for Hew Locke: The Procession for its accessibility and neutral tone. Drawing upon a series of motifs and concerns that have occupied the artist over decades, The Procession is a colorful gathering of approximately 140 life-size sculptures of masked figures of all ages and abilities adorned in printed fabrics and embroideries—Caribbean carnival queens, dancers, refugees, horseback-mounted military figures, fishers, laborers, pregnant women, children, drummers, and flag bearers.

The primary goal of the layout was to flatten any hierarchy between the English and the Spanish, while maintaining accessibility and legibility through the exhibition didactics.

Curators: Ruth Erickson, Barbara Lee, Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, and Anni A. Pullagura, Consulting Assistant Curator

The installation first commissioned by Tate Britain, UK, and making its North American debut at the ICA Watershed in Boston.

Design Axl designed NextView’s website to look modern and sharp, so we picked two awesome fonts: Surt from Blaze Type and Tartuffo by Lift Type. Surt is bold and clean, giving off a strong and confident vibe, which matches NextView’s innovative spirit perfectly. Tartuffo adds a touch of elegance with its unique details, making NextView's content easy to read and visually interesting. Together, these fonts make NextView’s website not just engaging but also stylish and professional.

Heart First Into This Ruin was published in hardcover paper-over-boards in June 2022. The endpapers match the light blue used on the cover for the title. The cover art is by Ken Price.

Wanda Coleman (b.1946 – d.2013) was an award-winning poet, novelist, and essayist born and raised in South Central Los Angeles. She was often called "the unofficial poet laureate of Los Angeles." Coleman was the author of twenty books of poetry and prose, including Bathwater Wine, which was awarded the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the American Academy of Poets—the first book by an African American woman to receive the prize.

Heart First Into This Ruin was published by Black Sparrow Press in 2022 and includes an introduction by Mahogany L. Browne, the first ever poet-in-residence at New York City's Lincoln Center.

Coleman’s experimental “American Sonnet” series was borne from influences as diverse as Huey P. Newton and Herman Melville, Amiri Baraka, and Robert Duncan. Her fresh new form inspired countless others, from Terrance Hayes to Billy Collins. Coleman published one hundred sonnets between 1986 and 2001, and Heart First Into This Ruin marks the first time all of Coleman’s American Sonnets appeared together in one book.

For the cover design, Tammy Ackerman used Plaza and Bernhard Gothic. The interior is set in Palatino with Bernhard Gothic for titling. The cover art (just the black and white line drawing) is by Ken Price, whose art has been used many times for Black Sparrow Press books, including Heat Wave by Charles Bukowski, and The Plain of Smokes by Harvey Mudd.

While selecting poems for Coleman’s 2020 book Wicked Enchantment, the poet Terrance Hayes also made a series of drawings of Coleman. This is one of those drawings.

The Bernhard Gothic used on the cover is also brought inside for titling. The poems are set in Palatino.

Every Black Sparrow Press colophon now includes mention of the founders, John and Barbara Martin.

The back cover

Dancing on the Grave of a Son of a Bitch was published in hardcover paper-over-boards in March 2022. The endpapers match the purple used on the cover for the subtitle.

Diane Wakoski (b. 1937) is a groundbreaking poet and the author of more than sixty books. Wakoski’s conversational, sometimes seemingly informal work merges the confessional and deep image to create compelling, story-like poems.

In 1971, Wakoski published The Motorcycle Betrayal Poems to tremendous acclaim. She was just thirty-three years old. Black Sparrow Press published a new expanded edition in 2022 titled after one of the collection’s poems: Dancing on the Grave of a Son of a Bitch. The new hardcover edition includes an introduction by Elizabeth A.I. Powell, additional poems, and an afterword by the author.

For the cover design, Tammy Ackerman used ITC Bauhaus, splitting the I in “BITCH” to create a visual reference to road stripes, a nod to the book’s subtitle: The Complete Motorcycle Betrayal Poems. The interior is set in Palatino with Optima for titling.

Black Sparrow Press’s lead designer, Barbara Martin, often spread her title page designs across two pages. Martin retired in 2002, but her influence is evident here in Tammy Ackerman’s title page.

Given that most of the poems in this collection were written in the 1970s, the Optima titling is a nod to the era.

Every Black Sparrow Press colophon now includes mention of the founders, John and Barbara Martin.

The back cover

Ramp’s 2023 advertising campaign highlights its approach to finance automation, showcasing Ramp's “commitment to saving time and money for businesses by streamlining expense management and corporate card usage”.

The typography uses TWK Lausanne, designed by Nizar Kazan and published by WELTKERN®. This typeface is used for both the text and headlines, lending a distinct visual identity to the campaign. Additionally, Ramp’s logo is custom-designed, based on TWK Lausanne, reinforcing the campaign’s unique and modern aesthetic.