This Perfect Day is the third novel by Ira Levin (1929–2007), following the Edgar Award winning A Kiss Before Dying (1953), the international bestseller Rosemary’s Baby (1967), and – as mentioned on the cover – the thriller novel The Boys from Brazil (1976). First published by Random House in 1970 with a jacket design by Paul Bacon, this is Dell’s 1979 paperback edition of this classic science fiction novel about a technocratic dystopia. Cover artist unknown.

Author’s name and title are in Amelia, the latter with an extra serif added to the left of the T as well as a descending f. The futuristic display face by Stan Davis was previously used for Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock – which gets name-checked in the blurb. Smaller text appears to be set in Helvetica Rounded which was released the year before, in 1978.

[More info on ISFDB]

We don’t really know the story of this one. What follows has a fact or two followed by some educated-but-potentially-misleading guesses.

Google Translate suggests that this is a birthday greeting for Rudolf von Larisch, the important Austrian calligrapher, editor, and type designer. Von Larisch would have turned 70 on April 1, 1926, which means this was most likely printed in that year. In 1926, Rudolf Koch would have been 49—and the Koch Antiqua caps (1922) in this piece would have been still new(ish).

We can’t tell if the heavier weight cap E used to augment some cap Us were semibold (1924) or bold (1926). Von Larisch and Koch certainly knew one another. Was this a gift from the latter to the former? We can’t say. Maybe this is just a thing printed by someone who had this type. But what we can say is that this appears to be a proof, marked up with spacing notations, so it probably never made it to its intended recipient (unless Von Larisch marked this up after getting it).

Now, how about those red and yellow hand embellishments? They sure look like the sort of crosses that one would see from the Offenbach Workshop. But a cross is not a complex structure and we aren’t authorities on Koch or his hand. So, we asked Dorothee Ader at the Klingspor Museum and Dan Reynolds who knows a lot, too. We trust them. Neither knew this piece or was convinced it was by Koch or his workshop. Dan pointed us to the greeting Koch made for Von Larisch’s 75th. So, all we can say for sure is that this was made for Von Larisch and it is a beautiful thing.

Source: www.ebay.it Photo: 3roby3 (edited). License: All Rights Reserved.

Clover was an Italian record label active in the late 1970s and early 1980s. For several of their maxi singles, they used a generic “12″ Special Disco” sleeve. The exclusively typographic design features Bronisław Zelek’s New Zelek (Mecanorma, 1974) and Colin Brignall’s Harlow (Letraset, 1977). The Clover logo seen on the label is in James H. Moore’s Moore Liberty (VGC, 1973).

The record included in the bag shown above is “Nowhere to Hide” / “Magic in the Groove” by French disco act Voyage. Label text is set in Simoncini’s Permanent.

The same design was also used by Dutch label CNR, starting in 1978. The only difference is the text “45 toeren” (Dutch for “45 rpm”). Their logo is in Microgramma. CNR also had color variants of the sleeve design.

[More info on Discogs]

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

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

Source: www.dba.dk License: All Rights Reserved.

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

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

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

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

This Christmas-themed compilation album with twelve tracks from eight of their artists was released by Coral Records in 1958.

[More info on Discogs]

The headline face on the back cover is worth a closer look: it’s Ornata. The ornamented roman was designed by Oskar H. W. Hadank and cut as a metal typeface in 14 (!) sizes by the Klingspor foundry.

Goodbye, Jimmy Cliff.

The Jamaican musician who helped popularize reggae music internationally died on November 24, 2025, at the age of 81. In 1971, when “Goodbye Yesterday” came out, Cliff already had a couple of hits under his belt, including “Wonderful World, Beautiful People” (1969) and “You Can Get It If You Really Want” (1970). It was still before his rise to global stardom: a year later, he would play the lead role in The Harder They Come, the film that “brought reggae to the world”, and contribute four songs to its iconic soundtrack, including the title track.

The sleeve for the Belgian release features Magnetic. Mecanorma’s contribution to the MICR genre is a dry transfer adaptation of Photo-Lettering’s Magnetic Ink, which in turn is based on James H. Moore’s Moore Computer. Magnetic/Magnetic Ink is distinguished by an unmodulated O and an I with thickened top and bottom, among other details.

[More info on Discogs]

The bold weight of Flat Top by Leo Castriota was shown in Photo-Lettering’s Number Two booklet, published in 1973 as Alphabet Directions #21. The elusive all-caps display face can here be seen in early use for the first-edition cover to Ann Grammary’s “non-Wiccan, non-Pagan guide to the basics of solitary witchcraft”. [Goodreads]

Cover art by Scottish illustrator Wilson McLean (b. 1937).

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

Gates of Fire is a novel by artist, film maker and author Elwyn Chamberlain (1927–2014), originally published by Grove Press in 1978. Shown here is the cover of Heyne’s German paperback edition, translated by Ingeborg F. Meier. I haven’t read this free library find, nor does the cheesy blurb (“Laura’s spiritual and sensual adventures in the land of the gurus”) tempt me to do so.

The cover typography is outstanding, though. The main typeface is ITC Serif Gothic Heavy, with its alternate form for E, and customized glyphs for F, S, and P (the latter being made from a D). The designers of Atelier Heinrichs & Schütz arranged the letterforms on a bouncing baseline, echoing the German title (literally “Jumps of fire”), with the U and Ü in the center of the two lines aligned to each other.

The secondary typeface is the rarely seen Poppl College, or, more precisely, the Bold weight of College 2, which is distinguished from College 1 by swashy caps. It was released by Berthold Fototype in 1981.

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

Its design – a monolinear italic with rounded terminals – and also the family structure with a second set of caps remind me of Loreley & Loretta. This double family came out a few years earlier, in 1977 (Loreley) and 1979 (Loretta): Georg Salden designed it for the exclusive use by members of the GST-Kreis, a group of phototypesetting studios.

Did Berthold commission College from Friedrich Poppl as a follower of Loreley & Loretta, so that they could offer something similar to their customers as well? Berthold and Salden weren’t on best terms after the Berlin type company messed up the production of Daphne in 1970. Salden later quoted the experience as one of the reasons why he decided to publish his fonts independently.

On the MyFonts page, Monotype (who since 2022 claim the rights to the Berthold library) state that “Poppl College was designed by Friedrich Poppl for Berthold in 1974.” However, period sources like Berthold’s 1982 and 1985 catalogs give a 1981 date. Berthold’s 1988 trademark filing likewise states that Poppl-College was first used in 1981.

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

A comparison of Loreley with Loreley leicht (top) and Poppl College 2 Bold and Regular (bottom)

Whatever Berthold’s commercial motives were, Poppl’s design is a distinct one and different from Salden’s in several aspects, from the overall narrower and more formal shapes to the round instead of angled entry and exit strokes. In many regards, College is a low-contrast derivative of Poppl-Exquisit from 1970, see a comparison on Identifont.

Berliner Jugendclub e.V. was founded in 1960 as an initiative to provide West Berlin’s youth with age-appropriate venues to meet, party, and enjoy (live) music. The first of these Senatstheken was the jazz-saloon in Steglitz, which was renamed Pop Inn in 1967 (and closed its doors in 2010). It was followed by the Dachluke on Kreuzberg’s Mehringdamm (1961–1988), the Swing-Point in Spandau, and, since 1967, the sloopy at Kurt-Schumacher-Platz in Reinickendorf, the largest of the four.

Around 1968, Jürgen Spohn designed a DIN A1 poster promoting the four youth clubs. The little doll arms waving out of apothecary bottles apparently reference the cover art for the 1965 Beatles album, Help. For the typography, Spohn paired Fette Volta (1956) and Fette Künstler-Schreibschrift (1958).

This purely typographic sleeve features letterforms drawn by four masters of 1970s display type: “Tommy Brown” is Design Sparkly, a thick-thin-thin multline variant of Churchward Design by Joseph Churchward. The song title is set in all-lowercase Motter Ombra by Othmar Motter. Last but not least, the sans in the middle is ITC Avant Garde Gothic by Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnase.

[More info on Discogs]

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.

Two bold rounded sans serifs that both originated in London around the same time, used together on a typographic sleeve for a single by the Barron Knights.

The name of the humorous pop rock group is shown in a two-color setting of Pluto Outline, additionally enhanced with a drop shadow effect. Pluto originated as a film typeface at Face Photosetting in 1969–1970. The four-style family also included a solid variant. However, the Outline style was the only one to be adopted by Letraset for dry transfer lettering (in 1972). It thus became more widespread.

The song names are added in Frankfurter, a similar “sausage” typeface that was designed by Bob Newman and issued as a Letraset original in 1970. In 1978, Letraset added Frankfurter Highlight.

[More info on Discogs]

From the inner flap:

“Just wait till you have children of your own” is one of the classic threats that parents have resorted to when all else fails to influence their offspring. And it takes on added comic force here as two of America's foremost family humorists present a hilarious look at teenagers of today.

The first edition of this book by writer Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) and cartoonist Bil Keane (1922–2011) features a very contained use of Bookman Meola. The only alternates – the s, the C, and the O – all twirl inwardly instead of swashing outwardly. I interpret the design choice as a way of portraying an otherwise composed parent coming ever so slightly undone by their children.

Jacket design credited to Patricia Saville Voehl.

Released in 1977 by RCA Special Products, this triple LP compilation features songs by Neil Sedaka, Del Shannon, Paul Anka, Sam Cooke, Dion DiMucci, Jimmie Rodgers, Jimmy Clanton, Bobby Vinton, Tommy James & The Shondells, Conway Twitty, and Fabian.

The cover design uses Pluto in tightly spaced caps, with a two-color fill.

[More info on Discogs]

A playful cover designed by Joyce Hopkins for a collection of stories compiled by Aidan Chambers, aimed at young adults.

Joyce was a long-time designer with Harper & Row book publishers. She was also one of the organizers of the seminal exhibition Black Artists in Graphic Communication, held at Composing Room’s “Gallery 303” in 1970. The show included 49 Black designers working in graphic design at the time. You can read more about the show in a contemporary article by Dr. Cheryl D. Miller in the Communication Arts magazine. Based on the documentation of the show, the Lubalin Center has been gathering an extensive collection of material that represents artifacts and artists included in that show.

Push Pin Art Deko in use for a 1975 best-of compilation by Sonny & Cher.

Paula Scher (b. 1948) used Milton Glaser’s sans-serif caps with solid letterforms. She overlayered the letters to counter their wideness, additionally creating a spatial effect through the shadows cast onto the subsequent glyphs. The disc-like crossbars in A E H get this treatment, too, turning them into floating objects. To further increase the compactness and to reduce clutter, Scher moved the two stems of H closer together and made the vertical in E thicker. The acute accent most likely is a custom addition. Finally, the lockup is enclosed in an Art Deco frame that echoes the pastel colors of the type.

[More info on Discogs]

Song names and credits on the back cover are set center-aligned in light Futura.

Sleeve for the Hungarian release on Pepita, licensed through EMI. Design by János Flohr (b. 1950). From Budapest Poster Gallery:

Flohr is a graphic designer, who worked in many fields of graphic design. He studied in the 1970s under Sándor Ernyei and József Finta. Initially he worked in the Kossuth Printing House’s reproduction workshop, but he soon got work as a graphic artist. He often designed posters and other type of advertisements for Hungaroton, Hungexpo, Magyar Hirdető and Medicor. He preferred to use photos on his compositions.

Kieselbach adds that he won the Best Poster of the Year award in 1983, and that he also worked on stamps and exhibition graphics.

In 1973, amidst his studies at the Budapest College of Applied Arts, Flohr designed this single sleeve for an early single by Wizzard. The English glam rock band was formed by Roy Wood, co-founder of the Electric Light Orchestra, in 1972. The typefaces originated in England, too: the aptly named Block is the creation of John Gorham (1937–2001). It here features in a multicolor application. The monolinear rounded sans used for the catalog number and “Stereo-Mono” is Michael Chave’s Pipeline. Both were issued by Face Photosetting in London in the early 1970s. The Pepita name is shown in Colin Brignall’s Countdown (Letraset, 1965).

[More info on Discogs]

Cover of the Phase 4 Stereo release

“POW!” – this peppy record cover features letterforms that seem to be shooting out of a black box in the center, with the big red O resembling a cannonball. The album title at the top is patterned after Halloween, alternating between purple and red letters, with yellow and black edges. The “shrapnel” in the lower half of this typographic explosion consists of caps from the open style of Permanent Headline, again with purple and red letter bodies. Together with the onomatopoetic title, the Ben Day dots in the background suggest that the uncredited sleeve design was inspired by works of pop artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, see his Whaam! (1963) or Sweet Dreams Baby! (1965).

Trombonist Ted Heath (1902–1969) was a British big band leader. According to Wikipedia, his band was the most successful one in the country during the 1950s, and the best swing band that Britain ever produced. In 1956, Ted Heath & His Music toured the U.S. together with Nat King Cole, with whom Heath became firm friends.

[More info on Discogs]

Cover for the mono pressing, without the Phase 4 Stereo frame featuring Futura

Source: www.flickr.com Uploaded to Flickr by cardboardamerica@gmail.com Jordan Smith and tagged with “smoke” and “futura”. License: All Rights Reserved.

Branded matchbook for the Hurricane Motor Lodge in Marathon, Florida, produced Universal Match, Miami. The left-leaning Smoke is here used to symbolize the impact of extreme wind.

Secondary text is set in Futura and News Gothic. The tagline “In the Keys – On the Gulf” is custom script lettering.

Source: www.flickr.com Uploaded to Flickr by cardboardamerica@gmail.com Jordan Smith and tagged with “smoke” and “futura”. License: All Rights Reserved.

Electric Circus is an iconic typeface designed by the famous New York studio, Brownjohn, Chermayfeff & Geismar for the legendary Electric Circus nightclub. A few months ago, Fonts In Use contributor Quinn Davis noted that the typeface was likely based on Anzeigen-Grotesk / Neue Aurora IX. This makes a lot of sense, as Anzeigen or Aurora was used as a secondary face on this (uncredited) concert program, and on many other designs by the firm.

Performing at the 1968 Electric Easter concert were electronic music pioneer, Morton Subotnick; a light show by Anthony Martin and Jerry Brandt; Medieval and Renaissance ensemble, New York Pro Musica; and psychedelic soul band, The Chambers Brothers.

First U.S. edition, Vol. 1, Praeger, New York, 1973

The Operas of Verdi is the magnus opus of British opera scholar, radio producer and broadcaster Julian Budden (1924–2007). It was published in three volumes in 1973, 1978, and 1981; first by Cassell & Company Ltd., London, and by Praeger Publishers, Inc., New York. It was also published in 1978 by Oxford University Press, New York, who in 1984 were the first to issue the series in paperback.

The books feature a version of Arnold Böcklin that’s clearly bolder than usual. This style wasn’t part of the original design as issued by the Weisert foundry in 1904. Named Arnold Bold, it was added at Face Photosetting, a type provider from London that later also went under the name Face Ronchetti.

The jacket designs for the first edition are credited to Tony Geddes. Like Budden, Geddes worked for the BBC where he created program titles and support graphics. On Fonts In Use, he’s best known as the designer of typefaces like Bullion, Milton, and Flamenco Inline. Some of these were available from Face, so it seems likely that Arnold Bold was drawn by Geddes himself. Take note that this isn’t confirmed.

Glyph sets for Arnold Bocklin [sic!] and Arnold Bold as shown in an undated (c.1981) catalog by Face

First British edition by Cassell, 1973–1981: Vol. 1. From Oberto to Rigoletto; Vol. 2. From Il Trovatore to La Forza del Destino; Vol. 3. From Don Carlos to Falstaff

Vol. 3, Oxford University Press, 1978. Note how the I in “Verdi” lost a bit of its hook – unlike the one in “Julian”.

First paperback edition, Oxford University Press, New York, 1984