A 1930s advertisement for the Gilbert Kaster Kit, with which one could cast various different types of metal figures.

The top line combines what appears to be Gothic Condensed No. 529 (or No. 521) with Modern Gothic Condensed and Condensed Gothic No. 10. The geometric sans used for the body text is Kabel (which was copied and expanded by Monotype as Sans Serif). The script used for "Pour", "Slush", and "Presto" is likely hand-lettered.

A banker’s dozen of “Pedigree” in Lydian caps, for a 1966 ad by the Empire Pencil Co. from Shelbyville, Tennessee, also known as Pencil City. “Pencils/Erasers/Crayons” is set in Filmotype Garnet. While “Empire” likely is custom lettering, the script used for “They write better!” is typeset, too: it’s Filmotype Korea.

I have steadily grown to rather like French railway publicity from the 1950s and early 1960s before they, like British Rail, moved away from commissioned artworks to photography for both posters and publicity. This 1959 brochure/leaflet, one of a standard ‘series’ on the regions of France and issued by SNCF – Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Français, and the cover is a very fine and striking image of one of the operator’s electric locomotives hauling a long distance train, the Alps in the background.

It is by “AB” – Albert Brenet (1903–2005) a long-lived French artist who worked primarily in gouache and is known for his maritime paintings, as well as railway work such as this. I think (and hopefully someone knowledgable will confirm) that this may be based on one of the SNCF’s Class CC7100 locomotives, as they had this straight ornamentation whereas the BB class had the “V” pattern although this has the upper lights that were not on CC’s!

The cover shows three styles from the Vendôme typeface family; noir (black, 1953), gras italique (bold italic), and romain (1951).

Another brochure from the same series, with the same typographic setup. The cover is a very fine and striking image of one of the operator's trains on the French Basque Coast.

Marcel Jacno’s eponymous Jacno (Deberny & Peignot, 1950), paired with red caps from Europe – the name under which the French foundry cast their version of Futura. Back then, no-one felt the need to retouch the ferry’s impressive exhaust fumes.

To celebrate the start of summer, Bibliothèque Forney posted a series of vintage travel posters from around the 1950s and 1960s, promoting vacation in France. A library of the City of Paris, the Bibliothèque Forney specializes in fine arts, decorative arts, graphic arts, and fashion.

These posters stem from the pre-globalization era, and exclusively feature typefaces designed – or at least fonts produced – in France. See the captions for details.

Poster by the French railway company SNCF, advertising their touristic autocar (i.e. motor coach) services, featuring Chambord étroit, a condensed member of the Chambord family designed by Roger Excoffon for Fonderie Olive, Marseilles, in 1949. Just like regular-wide Chambord closely follows Cassandre’s Peignot, the condensed is quite similar to the (all-caps) Initiales Peignot étroit.

The fortified city of Carcassone and three styles of Adrian Frutiger’s Univers (1957). Although commonly associated with the Swiss International Style, this momentous typeface family was designed at Deberny & Peignot in France.

Le Corbusier’s Chapelle Notre-Dame du Haut (1955) and more Chambord étroit. Neither Chambord demi-gras nor Peignot/Touraine (nor Île de France) seem to match the caps used for “France”. My best guess is that it's custom lettering based on Chambord.

The Musée national Fernand Léger in Biot, south-eastern France, featuring Chambord demi-gras. I’m coming to think that “France” is a logotype.

Another in-use example of Chambord étroit (“Bretagne”), here paired with regular-wide Chambord gras.

More beaches, more Chambord, this time featuring its italique style.

Univers and Antique Olive Nord, advertising the beaches of northern France.

This German scooter ad from the 1950s uses a rather remarkable typeface that has fallen into oblivion — Prägefest by Eduard Lautenbach (Ludwig & Mayer, 1926). The eyecatching bold script was not the very first one of its kind — Adscript, Typo Upright Bold, and, more directly, Lautenbach’s own Markant (also Ludwig & Mayer, 1909) are among the forerunners. Yet it certainly sparked a trend in German typefounding, see Phänomen and Bernhard Handschrift (1927), Mammut (1928), Wolfram (1930), Signal, Salut and Lautsprecher (1931), or Achtung and Energos (1932). In his Letterpress Memories*, Georg Kandler writes:

Prägefest started a new chapter in the production of script typefaces. Following the cursive scripts — with letters connected by joining strokes — that hitherto were limited to delicate applications, Prägefest dares a leap into the broad field of advertising. Robust and without overhangs, with sturdy strokes, it was […] outstandingly suited to the typesetting of ads, in which its tenacity played a crucial role for impressing the cardboard mats.

Latter is a step in the stereotyping process. This quality gave the typeface its name: prägefest is German for “impressing-proof”. Stempel had the same design as Reklame Handschrift (“advertising handwriting”). For markets abroad, Ludwig & Mayer came up with a less descriptive and more poetic name — Samson Script.

A few years later, in 1931, Monotype made a typeface that is different in most details, but very close in the overall appearance. This Series 322 is credited to Fritz Max Steltzer and is simply named Script, or Script Bold, and, in the U.S., Broad-Stroke Cursive. The digital revival is known as Monotype Script, or Script MT. According to Monotype, the design is “based on early twentieth-century German script writing styles”, but the features in common with Prägefest are striking. Eduard Lautenbach didn’t live to see this me-too release — he died in 1927, one year after his Prägefest was released.

* Alphabete. Erinnerungen an den Bleisatz. Kornwestheim: Minner-Verlag, 1995. My translation.

Character set of Prägefest — image courtesy of the late Georg Kraus AKA Bleisetzer. Kandler: “Another novelty was the relocation of the lowercase entry strokes onto the cap sorts, avoiding annoying overhangs.” Apart from the variants with high and low connector, the font includes alternates for ‘r’ and ‘M’; swash terminal forms for ‘g’, ‘n’, ‘r’, ‘t’; ligatures for ‘Sch’ (a common German trigraph, with a different ‘S’), ‘Cie’ (Compagnie) and ‘Co’ (Company). A different specimen additionally shows an alternate ‘H’ with closed top loop, a non-descending ‘P’ with minimal bowl, and ligatures for ‘ch’, ‘ck’, ‘ff’, ‘ss’.

Monotype Script (digital version), for comparison: Contrast is slightly higher, bottom terminals in ‘m’ and ‘n’ are flat, counters of ‘a’, ‘d’, ‘g’ are round, ‘z’ has no crossbar, ‘c’ is more closed, ‘u’ is wider, ‘g’ has a bigger loop, ‘k’ is open and has a more vertical leg. The spacing is less even, most notably in the gap after ‘s’.

1947

Illustrations by Arthur Radebaugh. The Bohn logo is lettered, not type. It underwent various changes over the years, starting with a slab serif in the early 1940s, then a sans for these ads later in the decade. By 1948 they fixed up the ‘N’ and raised the waist on the ‘B’ and ‘H’.

What typeface for ads about the future? Futura, of course!

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November, 1945

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Looks like the typesetters accidentally grabbed an open single quote instead of an apostrophe for “workers’”.

“House for the Atomic Age”: Bizarre luxury Hollywood home by contractor Hal Hayes doubles as atomic bomb shelter. 

Art Director: Frank Beatty