What a difference a mere four years can make: for some reason, Warner Books weren’t happy with the cover design for their paperback edition of A Very Easy Death from 1973 anymore, and commissioned a new one from M. Houner.

Both cover designs show text only, and both use typefaces that were en vogue at the time. But while Benguiat’s opulent swash Caslon was a child of the 1960s and already on its way out of fashion, Motter Ombra was still on the rise in 1977, and would see plenty of use in the 1980s and beyond.

Othmar Motter’s heavyweight with its characteristic semicircle shapes is set with one word per line, playfully arranged so that A and V form a (near-)mirror image. Also, the diagonals of the two y’s were brought into alignment and smoothly flow into the t’s top on the fourth line.

The black text at the bottom isn’t typographic. It looks like it was handwritten and subsequently cut out, for an edgy look.

Berlin Letters is a festival for lettering, type design, calligraphy and related fields. First organized in May 2019 to great acclaim, the long-awaited second edition will take place from July 5 to 7, 2024, this time at silent green, a unique venue in Berlin-Wedding.

Ulrike Rausch and Chris Campe, who organize the festival together with Claudia Guminski and Nils Töpfer, have put together an enticing program that comprises 24 talks and 18 workshops, featuring many skilled speakers from a range of backgrounds.

If this sounds interesting to you, book your ticket right away: the early bird offer will end today (April 30).

The logotype was drawn by Chris Campe, a designer, author and educator living in Hamburg. She also created an animated version, using a technique she’ll share in one of the workshops. Chris subsequently extended the cheerful bold script letters into a full (lowercase) alphabet, plus basic punctuation. This custom font named Berlin Letters Script serves for headlines on the Berlin Letters website. It’s paired with TOS Sans, a low-contrast sans with vertically cut terminals, started by Bernd Volmer – Berlin-based type designer and speaker at the first edition – around 2020. Named after its original licensee, The Organic Store, TOS Sans is work in progress and yet unreleased.

Disclosure: while I’m not a member of the Berlin Letters team, I will offer a lettering walk as part of the festival’s supporting program, together with Fritz Grögel.

Benguiat Zenedipity is a variant of Benguiat Serendipity with flared bottom halves. A condensed style of this 1960s display typeface was used for the cover of The Intruders Are Together, with a customized heart-shaped counter in O and letterforms that serve as mask for the photograph.

The debut album by the Philadelphia soul group was released in 1967 on Gamble Records. Founded in 1965 by Kenneth Gamble and Leon A. Huff as Excel Records, the label was renamed in 1972 and later merged into Philadelphia International. See the FunkMySoul blog for more info about the Intruders and their debut album.

[More info on Discogs]

The liner notes and track names on the back cover are set in Memphis.

Testùn Bar is a Neo-Italo Osteria serving experimental Italian dishes in Mt Lawley, Western Australia.

For the brand identity of Testùn, the design studio Gesture Systems referenced 1990s Italia football and the irreverence of ’90s Italy to deliver an eclectic identity to match to energy of the staff and venue experience.

Gesture Systems used a modified version of Monopol Kompakt by Nguyen Gobber, Monaako by Altiplano, and Louize Display by 205TF.

To mark its new 2024 season, Station V by Vilogia is presenting a brand new exhibition giving students from three schools in the Lille area carte blanche. Accompanied by their tutors, more than 60 students have worked collectively on the theme of “Cohabiting” during workshops, mobilising their artistic and scenographic skills. Throughout the year, their works will be displayed in turn in the windows of Station V, on Lille’s Grand Place. They will reflect a diversity of viewpoints and perspectives on the world from the young people of today.

The first exhibition will run from January to March: Mot à Mot, created by Léa Seiler and Lucas Sabathié, two students from ESDAC. The exhibition is a representation of five concepts linked to cohabitation: communication, learning, work, wandering and entertainment. It is a participatory exhibition through which visitors can interact and have fun by combining different words. It invites visitors to explore how writing and images can create links. Léa and Lucas chose to work with the Dina Chaumont Display, which fits in perfectly here with its colourful modularity and invites the viewer to play with it.

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Traverses School by My Little Paris offered a complete program of online courses and practical exercises, delivered by entrepreneurs, artists, inspiring authors and adventurers, to help us gain confidence in our own creativity. The school closed its virtual doors in December 2023.

The visual identity combines two typefaces. Titles and numbers are set in Dida. The accompanying serif used in roman and italic styles is Wulkan.

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My Morning and Afternoon’s Work is the first album by Naarm (Melbourne) based singer-songwriter and storyteller Rat Child. Despite the album’s mellow uplifting sonics, these songs are irrevocably time stamped in an era personal grief and depression: “they are the ink with which I painted myself back to life” — or as the song titles allude to, back to forgiveness and joy and love.

For the artwork, Dana Weizman from Paradise Studio paired a painting by Daniel O’Toole with typography set in Clifton and Droulers – both designed by Yoann Minet. Clifton is distributed by 205TF and Droulers by Bureau Brut.

Listen to the album on Bandcamp.

Tava is a recipe book about Eastern European baking and desserts from Romania and beyond, written by Irina Georgescu and published by Hardie Grant Books. Design by Evi O. Studio, using Jäger by VJ-Type throughout. Body copy is set in a combination of Klim Type Foundry’s National and Feijoa.

Halyard Display by Darden Studio stars alongside several typefaces by Vocal Type in the design of Ben’s Best Blnz.

Ben’s Best Blnz, or B3, is a cannabis brand initiated by Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s. Its mission is “to sell Great Pot and use the power of our business to Right the Wrongs of the War on Drugs.” The independent non-profit organization advocates for the decarceration of those convicted of nonviolent cannabis crimes and the descheduling of marijuana as a Schedule 1 substance.

For the branding, Eddie Opara and his team at Pentagram relied on eclectic and colorful typography, exclusively using typefaces by Black designers. Halyard Display by Joshua Darden is the text typeface on the B3 website (development by Jacob Macdonald), and is also used in the packaging designs as well as for merchandise such as T-shirts. Halyard is paired with a range of more expressive fonts all designed by Tré Seals from Vocal Type, namely Eva Peron, Eva Maria, Martin, Bayard, and Ruben.

Read and see more in Pentagram’s case study and on B3’s page about their art and design.

Homepage with mission statement, main menu, quotes, contact form, and infographics

Social Mission page with info on background, advocacy, investment, vendors and partners

Mission statement on the homepage. Interestingly, the lowercase glyphs from Halyard Display Regular are here combined with caps from the slightly heavier Medium weight.

Labels for the Blended SloSmokes that are available in various effects: Focus, Creative, Relax, Stimulate, Cloud 9, Kick Back, Happy Go Lucky, and Dream Sweet Dreams

Website detail featuring Eva Maria for the ticker text, Eva Peron for “B3”, and Halyard for text

Website details including an interactive shop finder

Get There Slower Full Color T-Shirt featuring Halyard Display with alternating glyph colors

Get There Slower Wavy T-Shirt featuring Halyard Display set on a wavy baseline

Full Spectrum Vape Pen packaging designs

Blended SmoSmokes packaging

Assorted packaging designs

Staging the Table in Europe 1500–1800, curated by Deborah L. Krohn and shown at the Bard Graduate Center provides a window into the culinary spectacles created during Europe's early modern period. The exhibition and accompanying publication explore dining customs and practices of the time—showcasing carving knives and forks made of precious materials, exquisitely illustrated manuals on carving meat, fish, and fruit, as well as napkins folded into elaborate sculptural forms.

Design and typography inspiration were drawn from book layouts, ornaments, and typography of the era, as well as historical pieces featured within the publication and exhibition. Reflecting the essence of the content, the design incorporates elements of embellishment, intricate details, and a touch of playfulness.

2022 rebrand by Gretel NY. The logomark is custom, derived from WiseType’s WT Zaft. As a customizable data analytics and business intelligence (BI) platform, Mode’s rebrand played off of its ability to build charts and reports based on your data by implementing a flexible, adaptable grid system that reacts to content in unique and different ways. Put another way, Mode exists to “fill in the gaps” around customers’ data and connect them together in compelling ways. The serif typefaces allow more versatility in stretching, squashing, and manipulating type in various configurations while still retaining recognizable letterform shapes. The green color scheme and “retro” serifs also evoke images of retro computing and a “close-to-the-metal” look and feel. The brand typefaces are Grenette by Colophon and Graphik by Commercial Type.

Homepage detail

“For the rock group Earth Quake, Danziger created this fragmented typographic treatment by photographing type through a prism. He amped up the visual tension by using blue and red of equal value for the background—an op-art treatment that causes the image to vibrate as the color wavelengths hit the eye simultaneously.” — Louise Sandhaus, Earthquakes, Mudslides, Fires & Riots: California and Graphic Design 1936-1986, p. 106

“One of the very few album covers I ever designed … The group liked the cover so well that they adopted it for their band’s logo.” — Louis Danziger, ArtCenter News, 2013

The original model for the title lettering appears to be Chubby, a phototype face released not too long before this album was released in 1971. According to Discogs, art direction was by Roland Young.

Logo variants

Launched by the CANA Foundation, Generation Cana is —

a concept by an established conservationist who wants to popularise and inspire a new and diverse generation of Americans to fall in love with their natural landscapes and support rewilding – of their own worldviews, and of the lands they live on.

The Cana Foundation (CF) supports research, policy and action to support the wellbeing of horses and burros in North America, and the role they play in America’s iconic prairie and grassland ecosystems. With strong connections to first nations communities and the nexus of social justice and environmental issues, CF’s founder wanted to reach more people and inspire a new audience to take action in ways that went beyond specific policy solutions.

The graphic identity was designed by Studio Chenchen with a range of new logos to promote the foundation through various printed and digital media. Studio Chenchen comments:

The brand concept, Love Songs to America, is based on revitalising North American Romanticism.

Its visual language draws on iconic precedents in North American naturalism that we updated to reach modern, urban audiences. An internal brand manifesto was established to crystalise the brand’s purpose, tone of voice and personality, along with a set of illustrative templates, design applications, and targeted messaging to demonstrate how the brand can be applied to achieve the clients goals.

Logo version ft. Kerozene, Swear, and Copperplate Gothic

Logo version in Swear and Copperplate Gothic

Kerozene and Editorial New Italic

Playlist covers ft. Kerozene and Editorial New Italic

Manifesto featuring Swear, Sharp Sans, and an unidentified serif [edit: it’s Eiko, see comments].

Instagram template ft. Swear, Copperplate Gothic, and Mighty Slab

Longsleeves

Swear and Sharp Sans, with an unidentified serif for the URL

Gruppe am Park created the visual identity of Schach Landesverband Oberösterreich, the Regional Chess Federation of Upper Austria, with an accessible and playful visual system. Based on a pair of fonts – Plage (from lift-type) for the logo and Cabinet Grotesk (from Indian Type Foundry – the all-black-and-white visual identity is punctuated with illustrations that perfectly match the typographic choices.

From Gruppe am Park’s website:

Chess is boring and completely out of date. Moreover, chess players are arrogant and nerdy. Confronted with these clichés, the question arises: How can the sport of chess and the Upper Austrian Chess Federation be made accessible and attractive to a younger target group and brought back into the public eye?

“Call Me When You Stop Stressing” is the tagline of the late 2022 apparel drop by No Pressure, the merchandise clothing line by YouTuber and influencer Luke Eich.

The typeface used on the hoodies is Oakley by Mark van Leeuwen. T-shirts and caps combine ED Lavonia (with a customized M) by Eko Setiawan and Nellie Display by Break Maiden.

Heritage of Lithuanian Agrarian Folklore is a personal poster project set to remind the significance of the historically highly regarded tradition of rural gardening in Lithuanian folk culture.

Visual identity for Leslie Jordan's studio album of traditional country hymns, including duets with the likes of Dolly Parton, Eddie Vedder and Chris Stapleton.

Visual identity designed in house at Platoon Records. Album cover, packaging and song visuals are set in my Oakley. The title lettering was designed by me, Mark van Leeuwen, and was derived from the same typeface.

[More info on Discogs]

Chevalrex – Ultimo compilation cover art

Artwork made by Rémy Poncet / Brest Brest Brest for his own series of digital compilations available on Spotify. The main title is designed with Grandmaster by Lucas Descroix and credits as well as small information are set in the font Molitor by Matthieu Cortat / 205TF.

Electronic music producer Rony Rex from Helsinki released his new single called “Alligator” featuring Alisky and US singer Madge on March 11, 2022.

The comedic look of the cover went well with the cartoonish typeface Brice. It’s used in the Bold weight for the headline and in Regular for the artists listing underneath.

OneTrickPonies skincare has “no shady ingredients.” They also state each product’s “superhero” ingredient right there on the packaging, using OH no Type Co.’s Cheee Wowie. Cheee is also used for the OPT logo and for the website ticker. It’s paired with Lineto’s LL Brown.

Website detail, with thumbs down in various skin tones, from Apple Color Emoji.

Website detail