Michel Waxmann’s 1969 multiline Michel in use for a book about Expressionism, edited by Maly and Dietfried Gerhardus and published by Phaidon in 1979:

Starting with the forerunners of Expressionism: Gauguin, Van Gogh, the French ‘Fauves’ and individualists such as the Norwegian Munch and the Belgian Ensor, the book surveys the work of the painters belonging to the German groups ‘Die Brücke’ and ‘Der Blaue Reiter’, independent painters such as the Austrians Kubin and Kokoschka, and finally the development of Expressionism into the ‘New Objectivity’, as represented by painters such as Max Beckmann, Otto Dix and Georg Grosz.

The sans used on the back cover is Univers.

Oxa, formerly known as Oxbotica, specializes in developing self-driving software, essentially serving as the operating system for autonomous vehicles across various industries. The London-based design studio, Solv, was commissioned to create a premium brand identity for this innovative spinout from Oxford University. Their efforts were aimed at supporting Oxa's ambition to revolutionize transportation and facilitate its expansion into North America.

The deliverables from Studio Solv included brand guidelines, a brand book, and vehicle designs for both the existing fleet and new partner vehicles. They also provided environmental graphics for the Oxford and Toronto offices, as well as for a test site at Culham. Collaborating with other agencies, Studio Solv played a key role in the creative direction of Oxa's new website and the production of two brand films. The rebranding effort culminated in a launch event hosted at Google HQ.

For the brand’s typography, Solv selected Duplet Open and Duplet Rounded, two related font families from Indian Type Foundry (ITF).

Despite the name of this book, the cover titling is indeed linear, connecting the inline of Dubbeldik between the first and second words. The designer modified Dubbeldik’s unusual s, giving it a horizontal stroke; the i dot is also rotated 90 degrees; and the r is truncated to help the two lines occupy the same width. The cornered a here is missing from the digital version of the typeface, but it is one of the two shapes available from Mecanorma when they originally issued it.

The author’s name, mathematician Václav Doležal (born 1927), is set without diacritics.

Together with the jagged wave lines, Klaus Richter’s striped Television (Mecanorma, 1975) creates a relevant technical look for the cover of Peter Manning’s Electronic & Computer Music. First published in hardback in 1985, this is the paperback edition from 1987. The book was set by Hope Services, Abingdon. It’s not clear if they designed the cover, too.

From the Oxford University Press website :

Oxford’s Very Short Introductions series offers concise and original introductions to a wide range of subjects – from Public Health to Buddhist Ethics, Soft Matter to Classics, and Art History to Globalization. Each volume provides an authoritative and engaging assessment of a concept, field, or body of work, drawing out the central ideas, themes, and approaches. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, new insights, and enthusiasm to make often challenging topics highly readable to develop your core knowledge. With over 700 titles and many more in development, as well as regularly updated new editions, the series is constantly evolving to reflect a contemporary readership. Whatever your area of study, whatever the topic that fascinates you, the series is an indispensable and accessible guide that will enrich your understanding.

OUP designer Philip Atkins created the overall design in 2000 and painted himself some of the abstract, heavily textured backgrounds which since have become synonymous with the series. Artist Joanna Usherwood is credited with most of the recent ones.

While these painted covers have done a lot to establish the visibility and popularity of the Very Short Introductions series, the unusual typographic pairing is probably just as iconic: Carol Twombly’s Lithos is used for each book's title, while all secondary information appears in two weights of Neue Helvetica.

Another post for Bloomsday.

James Joyce's novel Ulysses takes place on a single day, June 16, 1904, in Dublin, through which runs the river Liffey. The unknown designer picked a very appropriate typeface and filled it with water...

Thanks for introducing me to Denton Welch, Sonja!

The cover of this Oxford University Press edition of In Youth is Pleasure from 1982 combines a portrait (after Egon Schiele?) with a rarely seen typeface. It is Jowa-Schreibschrift, or Jowa Script, a solid version of Carlos Winkow’s chalk script Gong (1945). Issued in 1966 by the Johannes Wagner foundry in Ingolstadt, it was named to commemorate the foundry owner who had died the year before. The typeface was sold abroad as Wagner Penscript or Gong Solid—kudos to Michael for sharing a specimen—but it wasn’t a big hit. Some of its letterforms are rooted in the German script tradition of the early 20th century, like the Kurrent-like D or d, the descending P (which has been shifted up in this use), or the barred forms for X x Z z 7. With foundry type already in demise, Jowa Script came too late to make a mark. Unlike other—older—script typefaces, it wasn’t picked up by Letraset or any other manufacturer from the post-metal era, and fell into oblivion. It has been digitized by now, but the interpretation is neither faithful to the original nor very good.

Frontispiece and title page. The interior is set in Monotype Imprint with oldstyle numerals.

First published 1945 by Routledge & Kegan Paul. First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback in 1982, with an introduction by John Lehmann. Printed by Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press) Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk.

Gordon Alexander Craig’s Germany 1866–1945 was first published in hardback by the Oxford University Press in 1978. The paperback edition, pictured here, appeared in 1980.

Since 2008 the Oxford World’s Classics series has used a standardised but minimal cover style. It's a nice design that recognises the need to have some kind of identity but reduces it to a white strip more minimal and brighter than what came before and showcases the nice matte coating used for the covers.

The font used is Gerard Unger's Capitolium. It's an interesting decision that bypasses the usual Monotype and Adobe choices.

This slender stapled volume inside a wonderfully minimal cover is the brainchild of John Bell (1922–2008), a senior editor at Oxford University Press, who wrote comic verse in his spare time. The text is a set of comic verse on the trials and tribulations of publishing and of the hot metal typesetting machines of the time in particular, somewhat similar to the Guardian's San Seriffe. It speaks of a time when the physical, technical work of publishing a book and the conceptual side were done in adjacent buildings, rather than on different continents.

The poems were published originally according to the introduction in The Lantern, OUP’s house magazine, in 1951–1953, before this limited edition of 1984 published shortly after his retirement.

The book was printed by the Perpetua Press, a side project of University Printer Vivian Ridler operated at his house in Stanley Road (jokingly alluded to in the Apologia), according to the colophon in an edition of 200 copies. Five university libraries have it in their collections, so it looks like they thought it was funny. The Perpetua Press also published his wife’s poetry; Ridler’s obituary describes its work as “a model of typographic design”.

OUP continued to print in-house at its lovely headquarters on Walton Street before sadly separating the roles of publisher and printer in 1989, much of its output on Monotype’s hot metal machines until near the end. A small museum is located on-site if you're ever in Oxford and interested in looking round. Its old rival Cambridge University Press (also spoofed in the Apologia) continued to print its own books until 2012. The Guardian's obituary describes Ridler as the "last great" university printer at Oxford.

There’s never been an HMS Bembo, but there have been three HMS Benbows.

Design studio torchbox chose a light and airy layout for London’s Royal College of Art, with Knockout for the section heads and Benton Sans for everything else. (Some smaller texts get almost too light though. For captions and small body copy we’d recommend Benton Sans RE, especially designed for font-sizes down to 9px on screen.)