The pitfalls of partly prefilling form data: This invoice is dated July 12, 19450. “King’s Glass Supplies” is in Engravers Bold. The smaller text is set in two weights from Metro No. 2. The window was for this place, seventy years ago, as Make It Old has found out.

German learning cards from the 1950s, including Ei (egg) and Hase (hare).

The typeface is Erbar-Grotesk (1926) with its two-storey a. Initially the default form, it was later relegated to alternate status, and replaced by a monocular a. This change was very likely motivated to bring Erbar-Grotesk closer in appearance to its more successful competitor Futura. The original two-story form has the benefit of being less ambiguous – it can’t be confused with the letter o –, making it the preferable option for abecedarians.

Geometric sans serifs are often chosen for material in primary education. Their elementary shapes are spuriously equated to easily readable ones. Erbar’s double-storey a may be unambiguous, but other letterforms, like the f and t with their undersized features, don't perform as well.

Title page from Television Signal Analysis, a booklet published by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (otherwise known as the original AT&T) in 1955. The headline face is a version of Phenix American featuring rather intriguing alternate g and y glyphs.

The 1957 version of this booklet is available from the Internet Archive.

Gorgeous gothics ring in the new year. Timeless! Make America print again, shall we?

Robert Switzer – The Living Idol (Based on a screenplay by Albert Lewin). Signet Books 1335, 1956. Cover artist: Robert Maguire.

“Primitive Evil … Reincarnation … Savage Violence”

“This first Dover edition [1953] is an unaltered reprint of the first edition [by Harper & Brothers, 1946].” There are yellow and blue versions. See also a later paperback edition.

Ads for Sparkasse Erlangen, the local savings bank, on the front and back cover of a public transport time table. Printed by Gutenberg-Druckerei Erlangen in 1952, back when telephone numbers had four digits.

The fat upright cursive is Titanic a.k.a. Titantypo. Read more about it and the various digital versions on the typeface page. The condensed sans is the schmalfett style of Kristall-Grotesk.