Spanish branding studio Wozere created the new identity of Monasterio de San Francisco, a hotel located in Palma del Río near Córdoba and Sevilla.

They chose to gather a palette of textures, soft tones, and memories that guided the creation of a visual universe where the brand’s identity can truly come to life.

The curvy calligraphic logotype in Miss Fajardose is combined with a discreet use of PoW Limerick for the initials, as well as some of its vignettes. The condensed serif is Editorial New.

Millionaire Script combined with Millionaire Italic Uppercase by Altiplano Typefaces takes center stage in the identity for Maggiorata, a restaurant in Barcelona dedicated to “la bella cucina italiana”. Just like the maggiorata, Millionaire is vivid and sensual. Its calligraphy-inspired structure exudes human warmth. When displayed in large size, its letters form an image that is both fluid and elegant, capable of enhancing a space.

Neue Montreal by Pangram Pangram, on the other hand, brings all the qualities of a grotesk typeface to ensure menu readability at smaller sizes. The type palette is rounded off with Signerica, a wide informal handwriting face by Mans Greback.

According to Studio Roses:

The challenge was to craft an identity that embodied the essence of the Maggiorata – the archetype of Italian femininity, as iconic as Monica Bellucci or Sofia Loren. We wanted to reinterpret this imagery for the culinary world, moving beyond the traditional mamma or nonna to showcase a more confident, sensual side of Italian cooking.

The inspiration came from two sources: the striking contrast of the Maggiorata’s personality and her cinematic allure. From this, we developed a brand full of curves, movement, and charisma.

Who is Maggiorata? Maggiorata speaks with a distinct voice, blending Italian words with bold charm. She leaves her presence felt in unexpected ways – a note, a gesture, or a playful touch – proving that even unseen, she’s unforgettable.

Photography by Jandro de la Puente. Interior design by Nora Batlle. Copy and naming by Por Alert.

W. R. Cheney
Carriage Builder.
Repairing and Repainting Done Promptly.
Cor. Grant and Christian Sts.,
Lancaster, Pa.

William R. Cheney (1859-1932) was a blacksmith and carriage builder in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

For a similar Cheney business card by the same job printer (Pluck Print), see W. R. Cheney, Carriage Builder, Lancaster, Pa. See also a handbill for Carriages, Wagons, and Sleighs Repaired—Cheny's Repair Shop, Lancaster, Pa., ca. 1890.

The typography features Hansard caps set on a curve, French Oldstyle with larger initial caps, Archaic paired with R initials from Pynson, and Dante.

Text on the booth’s light box sign is set in Persona and a yet unidentified script

On the occasion of the Nitto ATP Finals (12-19 November 2023), Tennis association ATP and digital art platform Artchild partnered to launch a limited edition tennis poster, designed by acclaimed artist Honor Titus.

The poster was available online and on site during the 2023 Nitto ATP Finals. The on-site poster booth was designed by Dum Dum Studio / Christina Rodriguez and was dressed up in posters using a few handfuls of typefaces.

The capitals of the top four lines are a mix of Affigere and at least two more sans serifs. The bottom line is set in Persona and three more yet unidentified typefaces.

The smallest typeface on these posters is Fluxisch Else, a deliberately imperfect version of Univers; “extra” is set in Hypocrite.

The script typefaces on this poster are Ballet and Jane Austen, complemented by ITC American Typewriter Condensed.

“Un Uomo” is in Antique Book Cover, “E Una Racchetta” in Snell Roundhand. The bottom line pairs Serial B with Windsor Elongated.

A combination of ITC Avant Garde Gothic Condensed, Tzigane and Serial D

The newspaper-like masthead uses Leipzig Fraktur Bold. The big text is set in Century Schoolbook. Dalliance Script is used for the date and URL. The smaller texts are set in a combination of ITC Avant Garde Gothic and Airstream NF. The script used for Honor Titus’ name is Snell Roundhand.

A new book written by Anne Varichon and published by Princeton University Press on the history of color charts. From the website:

[Color Charts is a] beautifully illustrated history of the many inventive, poetic, and alluring ways in which color swatches have been selected and staged.

The font used in the cover artwork is Tiller. According to the publisher, the book will be released in February 2024.

The Form and Order of the Service for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, 1953. Printed using Monotype Perpetua, as designed by Eric Gill, as commissioned by Stanley Morison and the British Monotype Corporation.

Johann Baptist Däntl’s hardware store was established in 1839. In the early 20th century, it offered metal goods, home and kitchen appliances, furniture and building hardware. At the time this promotional card was printed, the household supply store was doing business as Däntl im Tal, referring to its address on the Tal, a street in the old town of Munich.

The name and the line above (“The long-established Munich household specialty store”) are rendered by hand in unadorned and relaxed blackletter styles. The list of items is set in three columns, center-aligned, in an unconnected brush script typeface. Devised by Stuttgart-based sign painter and poster designer Julius Kirn, it was issued in 1938, under two different names: while Weber in Stuttgart had it as Bison, Trennert in Altona issued it as Blizzard. Note the ligatures for ch and ck. There are at least three digital interpretations: Brush 738 by Bitstream, Blizzard by URW++ (sharper, a tad lighter, and more tightly spaced), and RMU Bison.

All other text is set in Wilhelm Pischner’s Neuzeit-Grotesk (1932), Stempel’s second and more down-to-earth attempt at a Futura competitor, after their Elegant-Grotesk from 1928. Neuzeit-Grotesk can be recognized by its flat-top 3. It here is used in the fett and Kursiv styles. The presence of the latter helps with dating this card: the italic wasn’t added before 1953, by Arthur Ritzel.

From the University of Texas Press:

Gone With The Wind is one of the most popular movies of all time. To commemorate its seventy-fifth anniversary in 2014, The Making of Gone With The Wind presents more than 600 items from the archives of David O. Selznick, the film’s producer, and his business partner John Hay “Jock” Whitney, which are housed at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. These rarely seen materials, which are also being featured in a major 2014 exhibition at the Ransom Center, offer fans and film historians alike a must-have behind-the-camera view of the production of this classic.

On the half-title and title pages, Medusa is used with swash initials and terminal forms, as well as flourishes from its Ornaments style. The italic caps are likewise from Medusa – these are provided as small caps. The author names use Ashbury in italic (Steve Wilson) and roman caps (Robert Osborne). The dust jacket features Finura, with Transat used for “Harry Ransom Center”.

Photos: Turner Classic Movies. See more images on Derek George’s portfolio website.

A painting by Eugène Delacroix inspired by Shakespeare’s famous drama, Othello and Desdemona, is the source of reflection and the origin of the exhibition Desdémone. Entre désir et désespoir, presented at the Institut du Monde Arabe in March 2015.

To go with the exhibition, a vinyl record with a recording of French actress Louise Bourgouin has been released. The record also serves as the exhibition catalog as a folded poster in the sleeve unfold into a real booklet, displaying all informations contained in the exhibition with the painting as a centerpiece.

Both the signage for the exhibition and the impressive vinyl release have been designed by Parisian studio Prototype, using NewParis and Euclid Flex in a very creative and playful way.

NewParis and Euclid Flex are available from Swiss Typefaces.

Shop front of a boutique in Alicante, Spain. The swashy typeface is Harrington. Originally issued by John Haddon & Co. in 1899, it was digitized by David Berlow for Font Bureau and comes bundled with several Microsoft products. Harrington was one of few Art Nouveau creations that included a lowercase. On this sign, it’s set exclusively in (too) tightly spaced caps. The C has ben rotated slightly to better fit with the A. The O is upside-down.

From Moonday, July, 21, 1969 (Did I work here in a past life?!)

For around 45 years, ATF’s Daily News Gothic delivered the majority of front page headlines for Daily News (officially New York Daily News). Everything from the events of World War II, to the assassination of John Lennon mostly kept consistent with the same type. Tempo Condensed was a steadfast supporting act (usually as oblique). Late 30s/early 40s front pages sometimes used Cheltenham as a secondary. Back covers looked to occasionally have alternate headlines, especially with sports issues.

Daily News Gothic – a metal type credited to ATF director Gerry Powell – effectively replaced the Daily News’s industry-standard wood type sans-serifs used by most newspapers, at that time. ATF were likely referencing wood types in creation of this metal one. Condensed Title Gothic No. 11 and Railroad Gothic (also both metal) definitely hit similar notes.

This Daily Gothic/Tempo combo was used from the Spring of 1939 until the fall of 1985, when a redesign looks to have been put into place. Franklin Gothic Condensed finally unseated Daily News Gothic.

New York Daily News celebrated its 100th anniversary on June 26th, 2019. The paper started out in 1919, with the name Illustrated Daily News. (Only to change to the current a few months later.)

Nick Sherman digitized an ATF trial proof of Daily News Gothic. See samples on his site HEX.

An early use of Daily New Gothic from 1939. A bomb meant to kill Hitler fails.

Daily News Gothic (“ASSASSINATED”) below a condensed woodtype (“KENNEDY”).

On August 1, 1966, former U.S. Marine Charles Whitman opened fire at the University of Texas campus in what was one of the the deadliest mass shootings in US history.

In a speech before the National Press Club on October 29, 1975, President Gerald Ford denies the near-bankrupt New York City a federal bailout.

A Modern Motel 26 Units – 13 with Kitchen Facilities Large airy rooms of all sizes for family accommodations. Homelike. Comfortable and Quiet. On Highway 66 – East Y Gallup, New Mexico Air Conditioned – Swimming Privileges

Alfred McCarr Adv. Ser. AAD-242

Dinner to the American Press Humorists by the Newspapers of Philadelphia, Wednesday, June 6, 1906, in Bohemia Hall, of the Pen and Pencil Club. Broadside; 5.5 × 8.5 inch. From the New York Public Library’s collection of historical restaurant menus, call number 1906-511.

The menu typography combines two of the most popular members of the Old English subgenre of Blackletter, Cloister Black and Engravers Old English. Both typefaces were issued by ATF a few years earlier, the former in 1904 and the latter in 1901 [McGrew 1993]. The center-aligned sans serif caps stem from a contemporary typeface, too: It is either Inland’s Blair (1900) or its slightly heavier companion Mitchell (1906). The umlauts for “Müller” had to be added manually.

The enlarged ‘D’ in ‘Dinner’ is from Missal Initials, a set of squarish caps designed by Will Bradley based on 15th-century sources (compare e.g. the Spiegelberger Missal). It was issued by ATF in 1904 and patented 28 February 1905. When A. V. Hershey developed his collection of early vector fonts in the 1960s, Missal Initials provided the inspiration for the Italian Gothic caps. By extension, it influenced the recently released Minotaur Lombardic by Production Type.

A frilly menu for a fancy 1883 Christmas dinner at the Continental Hotel in Chicago. The cover features the funky Dado, reverse-contrast novelty designed just a year earlier by the prolific Herman Ihlenburg of MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan. Inside is another recent release, Geometric, issued by Central Type Foundry in 1881. I can’t precisely identify the sans and serif used for smaller type, but see Light-face Gothics.

In 1931, the Limited Editions Club in New York commissioned Jan van Krimpen to design a two-volume series for the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer. Shown in the images, the Odyssey is hard-bound with a dark blue cloth surface, contained in a yellow slipcase.

The book title "The Odyssey of Homer" only appears on the spine in all caps, embossed in gold. Other than drop caps, there is no illustration inside. The pages' top edge are gold glided, and the reading edges are deckled. Some pages are not even cut open.

There are four kinds of watermark on many pages, indicating this paper is specially made for the job: lettering "The Limited Editions Club"; lettering "Homer's Odyssey"; ornament; and human figure.

This Homer was also the first use of Van Krimpen's own typeface, Romanée, casted at 16-point. Romanée was an upright style originally conceived to accompany Enschedé's Kleine Text Cursyf ("[for] Small Text Italic" in English), rediscovered in its archive. At that point, Van Krimpen had yet to design his own Romanée italic. Therefore the introduction, which is set completely in italic, uses Monotype Van Dijck.

This book has an edition of 1500, all signed by Van Krimpen himself. Photos are taken from my own copy, No. 352.

Peter Matthias Noordzij of TEFF (The Enschedé Font Foundry) partially digitized Romanée with Fred Smeijers in 1995. This digital Romanée was based on the 16-point metal, and only has an upright. It was used to set a Van Krimpen biography, titled Adieu æsthetica & Mooie pagina's, and also a subsequent small booklet, presumably an exhibition catalog, titled The Aesthetic World of Jan van Krimpen. Perhaps because the italics were never completely digitized, TEFF's digital Romanée was never released.

In TypeCon 2016 I met Smeijers, and asked him why it stalled. He responded, "[he and PMN] had a difference of vision" in how the italics should be digitized.

Watermark: “The Limited Editions Club”

Watermark: “Homer’s Odyssey”

Watermark: ornament.

Watermark: Human figure.

Edited by Mona Wilson. The fancy script typeface used on the label as well as on the title page is Union Pearl, the oldest surviving decorated type — in all caps, no less!

This private press edition of Sir Philip Sidney’s sonnet sequence is currently available from McNaughtan’s Bookshop & Gallery, Edinburgh:

No. 7 of 1,210 copies, 8vo, pp. xl, 195, [1]. Original boards covered in patterned cream paper, printed label to front cover, green board chemise and patterned slipcase.

The book’s interior is set in Bembo Italic, with the Roman used for emphasis. Monotype’s Bembo 270 was released in 1929.

The design of a uniform edition of works by Joseph Roth (1894–1939) published by Granta Books from 2013 on features a custom typeface by the design agency. Italian Sans was drawn by Henrik Kubel of A2/SW/HK in 2012 and released for general licensing through A2-Type the same year.

The Radetzky March, front cover

The Radetzky March, back cover

“Freemasons menu, folded to resemble a Masonic apron.” — Sarah Hyndman visiting the British Menu Archive at the British Museum of Food.

Of the many ornate roman typefaces of the late 19th century, Dado is unusual in that it has a horizontal (or reversed) stress axis. It appears in MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan’s 1885 catalog (below) where it is shown as patented in 1882. The designer is assumed to be Herman Ihlenberg, as it is for so many of these MS&J faces.

The name is quite appropriate if it references the architectural terms for the lower part of a wall and the rail/molding that divides it. The heavy stroke at the face’s x-height forms something of a dado rail along a line of letters.

1885 MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan catalog, page 376a.

1892 MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan catalog, page 260.

This script on this cover designed by Louise Fili’s studio is calligraphy or lettering, not type. There are many fonts in this English copperplate style — Novia probably comes closest — but none that match these letterforms, which are each purposefully distinct from one another. (Note, for instance, that each ‘S’ has its own swash.) The sans serif is Bernhard Gothic, a classic choice for formal or “stylish” material from nearly a century ago — perhaps an ironic wink at the fact that this book is about contemporary writing.

Venus Extended

This portfolio from Bauer Alphabets Inc. (the U.S. arm of Bauersche Gießerei) contains about 30 sheets showing examples of Bauer types in use. The publish date is unknown, but the style of the design, the imagery, and the release dates of the typefaces shown indicate mid 1950s.

Horizon (Imprimatur in Germany)

Bauer Topic (Steile Futura in Germany)

Bernhard Cursive (Bernhard Schönschrift in Germany) and Bauer Bodoni

Elizabeth and Weiss (Weiß-Antiqua in Germany)

Hellenic Wide and Venus Extended. The Leica M-3 was introduced in 1954, and these ads appeared as early as 1955, indicating that this specimen must have come sometime after.

Cartoon (Fresko in Germany) and Futura

Corvinus and Stradivarius (Symphonie in Germany)

Trafton Script (Quick in Germany) and Weiß