Beautiful Future album cover [More info on Discogs]

Beautiful Future is the ninth studio album by Scottish rock band Primal Scream, released in July 2008. The artwork for the whole campaign was done by Julian House at Intro, embracing a low-fi aesthetic that appears to reference elements of psychological horror/slasher films. The album cover looks like a movie title that was photographed from a TV screen, bathed in blood red and shot at an angle from up close, exposing its raster pattern.

In terms of typography, House went back to Letraset faces from the 1970s. The album cover has Baby Teeth, a design by Milton Glaser that here can be read as claustrophobic, and that shares characteristics with Philip Castle’s lettering for A Clockwork Orange – a reference that is further enforced by the wide open eyes.

For the first single “Can’t Go Back”, House selected all-caps Shatter, set in three tilted lines. This use of the psyched design by Vic Carless ties in with poster designs for movies like Schizo (1976) or Dracula (1973). Shatter is supported by Helvetica Bold, i.e. its unscathed precursor. The B-side of the vinyl release has a cover version of Hawkwind’s “Urban Guerrilla”.

The series is concluded by the second single “Uptown”, featuring another (retro-)futuristic design from the days of rubdown type: it’s Colin Brignall’s Countdown, a name that oscillates between tech euphoria and threat, and ryhmes with the song title.

“Can’t Go Back” single cover (front) [More info on Discogs]

“Can’t Go Back” single (label)

“Can’t Go Back” single cover (back)

“Uptown” single cover [More info on Discogs]

Book jacket of the 1975 edition, Franklin Watts, New York

A waterfall of all-caps letters lures the reader into Monsters, Monsters, Monsters. The anthology of horror stories selected by Helen Hoke was published by Franklin Watts in 1974. The jacket of the first edition featured Giorgio on the cover (see below). It was replaced with Eckmann for a 1975 printing. The included authors are Joseph Payne Brennan, Eric Frank Russell, E.F. Benson, A.W. Reed & Inez Hames, Ray Bradbury, Edgar Allen Poe, Owen Rutter, H.G. Wells, Jacynth Hope-Simpson, Arthur Conan Doyle, Saki, Ambrose Pierce, and H.P. Lovercraft. The book contains pictures by Charles Keeping.

[More info on ISFDB]

Book jacket of the first edition, Franklin Watts, London and New York, 1974

The interior appears to be largely identical in both editions. This is the title page from the 1975 book.

Table of contents, with tabular oldstyle numerals for the page numbers

Story opening with the title in Giorgio. The text typeface is Plantin.

Regular Fonts In Use contributor Jan Middendorp has submitted an article about the Spanish edition of Selling Hitler, featuring the Alarm typeface. This post is added in response: It’s about an older edition of the same book that, as Jan points out, uses the similar Fanfare.

Robert Harris’s detailed account of the fake Hitler Diaries and the stir they caused in 1983 was originally published in Great Britain by Faber & Faber. These images show the first US edition, published by Pantheon Books in 1986. As it is often the case with books (or films) that deal with topics related to Nazi Germany, the designer picked a typeface that has a “blacklettery” feel to it, without actually belonging to this typeface genre. After all, proper frakturs and related styles can pose a readability issue – not only for American or Spanish readers, but since several decades also for the majority of Germans. That’s were hybrid typefaces like Alarm or Fanfare come in handy. They exhibit the dark color and broken strokes of blackletter, adding the desired tough “Teutonic” look, but are unadorned and adhere to the skeleton that’s familiar to readers of roman type. Fanfare was first cast by the Berthold foundry in 1927, in the period of the Weimar Republic. It was designed by Louis Oppenheim, a graphic artist of Jewish origin who died in 1936.

For the title on the book jacket, the letterforms of Fanfare’s Condensed style were partly modified. The S that looks like a mirrored Z got a new form with diagonal top and bottom thirds, maybe to allude to the runic insignia of the SS. The lowercase g was equipped with a full descender – in the original, this letter barely reaches below the baseline. In H, the crossbar was replaced with a diamond that echoes the i dot (or is it also a visual pun referencing Hitler’s toothbrush moustache?). The secondary text is set in caps from Enge Block, a typeface that likewise originated at Berthold in the late 1920s. No designer is credited for the jacket design. The illustration seems to be signed by “S. Kelly”. In the 1980s, all the fonts shown in this post were available from Berthold Fototypes: In addition to the photo adaptations of the three Berthold originals, Weiß-Kapitale kräftig was carried under license from Neufville.

The title page features Weiß-Kapitale kräftig. This cut was added around 1950 to the series that started as Weiß-Initialen at the Bauer foundry in 1931.

The blurb on the back combines a red drop cap from Fanfare with text set in Berliner Grotesk Medium. Drawn by Erik Spiekermann in 1979, it’s a revival of what used to go as the halbfett style of the Block series.

Sign at Volkspark Wilmersdorf, a large municipal park in the borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, and one of about sixteen “people’s parks” in Berlin. It’s a rather rare example of stenciled blackletter, certainly in the contemporary public space. The letterforms are custom made. However, the proportion and weight as well as structural details – e.g. the mix of straights and curves in a vs. o as well as in the capitals – suggest that they are modeled after an existing typeface: Rudolf Koch’s Fette Deutsche Schrift.

I don’t know how old this sign is. The park was originally designed in 1912–1914 and remodeled several times, in 1935, 1945, 1960–1965, and 1986–1987, according to the Berlin Monument Authority. From 1917 to 1945, the park was named Hindenburgpark. Chances are the sign was made in the 1980s or even later, and the type style chosen in an attempt to refer to the period of construction – Deutsche Schrift was first issued in 1910 and enjoyed great popularity in the 1910s and 1920s. I doubt that stenciled blackletter signs were a common thing back then, though. It looks rather historicizing to me, but in a refreshingly punk way.

Thank you for reminding me of this, Sonja!

Resetting using a digital version, Alter Littera’s Deutsche Schrift. The angled terminal in p, the ascender in d, or the descender in f support the claim that Rudolf Koch’s typeface was the inspiration for the sign. Other details like the bottom of W or the shape of the i dot are off.

This todo-meets-RPG app makes use of Metalista in its logo, and other promotional material like the teaser video (see below). American Typewriter, which was newly available in iOS 3.0, is used as a UI font.

Posted as an addendum to my blog article about the Volksbühne poster campaign.

In the blog post, I wrote “Volksbühne is blackletter. Blackletter is Volksbühne.” It should become clear what I meant by that when you take a look at the countless flyers for the events of the current season. LSD Design uses more than a dozen different blackletter typefaces, from all subcategories. They are claiming the whole genre for the Volksbühne identity – and it works, because hardly anyone else dares to use these typefaces.

There is textura, fraktur, and one bastarda (Zeitungs-Schwabacher). Some are well-known, like Wilhelm Klingspor Gotisch, others relatively obscure, like Münchner Gotisch. Linotype Textur is not the only contemporary design: there is also Agincourt (David Quay, 1983) and Avebury (Jim Parkinson, 2005). One could think that each flyer got its own typeface, but that’s not true. Some appear twice, like Haenel Fraktur, some even three times, like Deutsche Reichsschrift.

There are three exponents of the controversial simplified gotisch or “schaftstiefelgrotesk”: Nürnberg (Ludwig Wagner, 1934), Tannenberg (D. Stempel AG, 1933–35) and National (Ludwig & Mayer, 1933–38). Unlike on the posters, Potsdam does not make an appearance here (yet). Tannenberg (Das Duell, Dancing About) is confusingly similar to National (Kill your Darlings!). Seeing all the elements of the eclectic visual identity in context, I must admit that, from a formal standpoint, it makes sense to include some simpler, unadorned typefaces – blackletter grotesks, so to say – in the mix.

The backside of each sticker holds information about the event. This text is presented rather conventionally, in Akzidenz-Grotesk.

The showcases on the outside of the Volksbühne building display the monthly program, unfolded. The actual agenda is not in blackletter, but in Akzidenz-Grotesk. The URL and the verso with the Warhol quote is in Deutsche Reichsschrift.

The figures on the monthly program leaflets for August/September and October are from Tannenberg Schmalfett.

The assorted take-away flyers, as they are offered in the Volksbühne foyer.