From the back cover:

An interpretation of Egypt’s relations with her fellow Arab states during the era of Gamal ’Abd al-Nasir, Mr. Kerr’s study begins in 1958. This momentous year saw the creation of the UNited Arab Republic, The Lebanese civil war, and the Iraqi revolution.

The cover uses an interesting and contrasting combination of Neil Bold and Columbus typefaces.

The design is by Ronald Clyne, a prolific album and book jacket designer of the 1960/70s. He often used texture in his work, similar to the one used on the right half of this cover.

An interesting fact about this book is that the son of its author, Malcolm H. Kerr, is the former NBA player and current coach Steve Kerr. Steve was born in Beirut, Lebanon, where his father was an academic specializing in the Middle East.

This is the third edition of this book published in 1971. The first edition was published in 1965, titled “The Arab Cold War, 1958-1964”. Information and additional details on the book can be found on Goodreads.

This short essay aims at telling and illuminating the story of the most famous classical typeface and its numerous modern and contemporary revivals. The book deals with the historical aspects of typographic culture as well as the conditions of contemporary typographic practice. Through the example of the Garamond typeface, it offers a broader analysis of the differents ways in which graphic designers, publishers and readers interact with typography.

De quoi Garamond est-il le nom? was written by Stéphane Darricau. It was edited and published by Bureau Brut and Stéphane Darricau, Toulouse, in an edition of 750 copies. Traulha Lineara by Bureau Brut is used throughout.

The book has 84 pages and measures 125×210 mm (plus flaps). It was printed by Art & Caractère, Lavaur on grey cardboard and 115 g/m² Munken Print White 1.8 uncoated offset paper, and bound with a sewn Otabind binding by Atelier Façonnage, Neuillé-Pont-Pierre.
ISBN 978-2-9580531-1-6

Source: www.c82.net C82 / Nicholas Rougeux. License: All Rights Reserved.

January 1990, ft. an unidentified rounded sans

Source: www.c82.net C82 / Nicholas Rougeux. License: All Rights Reserved.

February 1990 ft. Italia Bold

C82 is the website of Nicholas Rougeux, a Chicago-based designer and data artist. One of the many great things one can find on C82 is his collection of train tickets sold by Metra. Every month, the commuter rail system in the Chicago metropolitan area releases a new ticket design. In 2004, Nick started collecting. Over the years, and with the help from other ephemera enthusiasts as well as of Metra, the archive considerably grew in size. At the time of writing, it includes an impressive 1,395 tickets, spanning more than fifty years of commuter history.

This post highlights the monthly tickets from 1990 and 1991. In a recent blog update, Nick comments:

In the early 90s, ticket designs varied significantly with new typography and visual styles appearing each month. I can’t say these are some of my favorites but I recognize that this may have been in an effort to curb counterfeiting. However, I do enjoy some of the typography from the 1990s tickets. I owe a big thanks to fellow collector John for these and others.

Each of the tickets features a different typeface. Many of the chosen fonts stem from the libraries of ITC (Korinna, Quorum, Serif Gothic, Zapf Chancery, …) and Letraset (Caxton, Italia, Romic (Letraset), …). There are also classics that go back to the era of foundry type, like Beton, City, or Optima, and Monotype originals like Albertus and Plantin. The typographic smorgasbord is completed by designs as diverse as Moderne Schwabacher, a turn-of-the-century blackletter; Salut, an upright script first cast by Gebr. Klingspor in the 1930s; and Checkmate, a futuristic sans with chamfered corners, dreamt up at Schaedler in the 1970s – all of which were either used still as phototype, or in the form of early digitizations.

For the year 1990, all abbreviated month names are shown in vertically stretched letterforms. The source of the stacked numerals (“90”) was identified by Quinn as City Bold, see comments. The bitmap caps (“D/A”) are likely custom. While the spelled-out month names and the ticket numbers are similar to OCR-B, the specific font appears to be a proprietary design with some differences, probably from a specialized printing machine.

The Metra logo seen on the depicted train as well as on some of the tickets is Crillee. See also the dedicated post about it.

Source: www.c82.net C82 / Nicholas Rougeux. License: All Rights Reserved.

March 1990 ft. Macbeth

Source: www.c82.net C82 / Nicholas Rougeux. License: All Rights Reserved.

April 1990 ft. City Bold

Source: www.c82.net C82 / Nicholas Rougeux. License: All Rights Reserved.

May 1990 ft. Checkmate

Source: www.c82.net C82 / Nicholas Rougeux. License: All Rights Reserved.

June 1990 ft. Roberta

Source: www.c82.net C82 / Nicholas Rougeux. License: All Rights Reserved.

July 1990 ft. what appears to be a version of Filmotype Amber (or a similar face)

Source: www.c82.net C82 / Nicholas Rougeux. License: All Rights Reserved.

August 1990 ft. Salut

Source: www.c82.net C82 / Nicholas Rougeux. License: All Rights Reserved.

September 1990 ft. Moderne Schwabacher a.k.a. Chalet Text

Source: www.c82.net C82 / Nicholas Rougeux. License: All Rights Reserved.

October 1990 ft. Clarendon Condensed

Source: www.c82.net C82 / Nicholas Rougeux. License: All Rights Reserved.

November 1990 ft. Beton Bold Condensed

Source: www.c82.net C82 / Nicholas Rougeux. License: All Rights Reserved.

January 1991 ft. ITC Quorum Bold

Source: www.c82.net C82 / Nicholas Rougeux. License: All Rights Reserved.

February 1991 ft. ITC Kabel Ultra

Source: www.c82.net C82 / Nicholas Rougeux. License: All Rights Reserved.

March 1991 ft. ITC Serif Gothic Heavy with the pointed forms for M and A that were omitted from the digital version. “March 1991” uses ITC Korinna and Times New Roman.

Source: www.c82.net C82 / Nicholas Rougeux. License: All Rights Reserved.

April 1991 ft. a bold variant of Plantin

Source: www.c82.net C82 / Nicholas Rougeux. License: All Rights Reserved.

May 1991 ft. a bold variant of Albertus

Source: www.c82.net C82 / Nicholas Rougeux. License: All Rights Reserved.

June 1991 ft. Caxton Bold

Source: www.c82.net C82 / Nicholas Rougeux. License: All Rights Reserved.

July 1991 ft. Optima Bold

Source: www.c82.net C82 / Nicholas Rougeux. License: All Rights Reserved.

August ft. ITC Cheltenham Bold

Source: www.c82.net C82 / Nicholas Rougeux. License: All Rights Reserved.

September 1991 ft. ITC Zapf Chancery Bold with the alternate swash caps

Source: www.c82.net C82 / Nicholas Rougeux. License: All Rights Reserved.

October 1991 ft. a bold variant of Century Oldstyle

Source: www.c82.net C82 / Nicholas Rougeux. License: All Rights Reserved.

November 1991 ft. Romic (Letraset) Bold

Source: www.c82.net C82 / Nicholas Rougeux. License: All Rights Reserved.

December 1991 ft. ITC Berkeley Oldstyle

Source: historical.ha.com Heritage Auctions. License: All Rights Reserved.

This dust jacket was created for the first edition of The Stars at Noon by Denis Johnson (1949–2017), published by Alfred A. Knopf in September 1986 as a Borzoi book:

The novel follows an unnamed American woman during the Nicaraguan Revolution in 1984. It was adapted into the 2022 film Stars at Noon, starring Margaret Qualley and Joe Alwyn.

In my previous post about the Esther Phillips album cover, I wrote that Allen Stingray needs to be used in big sizes to really shine.

Prolific book designer R.D. Scudellari (1933–2022) got the message: he used the mesmerizing 3D face in appropriately giant letters. The interplay of positive and negative shapes nicely corresponds to the book’s title. Scudellari further extended its eponymous features – the fin-like boundaries and the blade-like stripes – to the design as a whole. As a finishing touch, he added contour lines to better define a few letters, compare T S R to a specimen of the unmodified Stingray.

The author’s name is added in caps from a phototype version of Binner, possibly PLINC’s Brass Band.

Via @that.covers.it, a inspirational collection of book jackets and covers maintained by Amanda Weiss.

Source: www.abebooks.com Dan Pope Books (edited). License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: www.abebooks.com Dan Pope Books (edited). License: All Rights Reserved.

The title page features Weiß-Initialen Serie I, with Electra for the publisher line.

Source: archive.org Internet Archive. License: All Rights Reserved.

Captain Entropy is a children’s album by Canadian musician and composer Bruce Haack (1931–1988). The spectacular three-dimensional letterforms on this album cover were not custom drawn by designer Jack Wolff. They are from a ready-made alphabet named Allen Stingray.

Created by John S. Allen, it was added to Photo-Lettering’s library sometime between their 1965 and 1971 catalogs. In 1958, Fonderie Olive in France had issued Calypso, which might have provided some inspiration. Stingray is not quite as breathtaking as that, and being a photo typeface, it was much easier to pull off technically than Roger Excoffon’s 3D halftone extravaganza – which had to be engraved and cast in metal.

Photo: Florian Hardwig. License: CC BY-NC-SA.

Allen Stingray as shown in Photo-Lettering’s One-Line Manual of Styles, 1971

Allen’s design nevertheless is adorable, and has qualities of its own. The three-dimensional look is achieved by two sets of parallel stripes that run diagonally in opposite directions, defining the folded letterforms with hardly any extra interior lines, and often without explicit counters or apertures. In most glyphs, the border between “foreground” and “background” runs in a sweeping curve, much like a ray’s flapping fin. Take that feature and combine it with the shape of the stripes that taper like blades – and you know where Stingray got its name from.

All additional text is set in a couple of styles from Univers.

[More info on Discogs]

Source: archive.org Internet Archive. License: All Rights Reserved.

August Bagel’s printing firm offered book production, artistic printing, lithography, but also publishing and distribution. In addition, it had an in-house bookbindery as well as a paper mill.

This ad from 1909 makes early use of Ehmcke-Antiqua. Designed by Fritz Helmuth Ehmcke, the typeface was first cast by Flinsch around 1908. Caslon in England had the design as Carlton and Neufville in Spain as Antigua Cervantes. In the 1970s, Letraset made a revival using Caslon’s name, see Carlton. Here it’s used exclusively in capitals, stacked and justified, with compact umlauts, (some) tightly spaced CH pairs, and the non-ligning numerals.

August Bagel (1838–1916) took over the company from his father, Peter August Bagel (1809–1881), who had established it in Eggerscheidt and moved it to Düsseldorf in 1878. Bagel’s publishing range included school books, maps and illustrated books. Bagel is still in business today, now focusing on official gazettes for the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. They also produce postage stamps.

Designer Woody Woodward was into type-only album covers. We previously featured one such designs of his, made in 1963 for The De-Fenders, with Inserat-Grotesk.

The cover shown here is from the year before, for an album by Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers originally released in 1957. It’s combined with a session recorded by the Elmo Hope Quintet featuring saxophonist Harold Land in October 1957. Woodward used Grotesque No. 9 Italic and repeated the title five times, building a mesmerizing wall of type. You can listen to the music on the Internet Archive.

[More info on Discogs]

The track list on the back is set in News Gothic Bold, with Kaufmann Bold for the headings. The roman used for John William Hardy’s liner notes is a bit too small to identify.

Czechoslovak movie poster for Ingmar Bergman’s Persona starring Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann, 23″×32.5″.

The chosen typefaces both are related to Georg Trump. The title is set in his Trump-Gravur, an outlined and shaded display companion to Trump-Mediäval, in the tradition of baroque designs like Rosart Ombré from 1759. Trump-Gravur was first cast by the Weber foundry in Stuttgart, Germany in 1960. In the same year, Czechoslovak foundry Grafotechna issued a condensed grotesque named Pražské kamenné which is here used to set the small line of text. According to Canada Type, this design by Stanislav Maršo was a reworking of Trump’s Signum (Weber, 1955). Their Trump Gothic (2005) is “a reconception of ideas” from both Signum and Pražské kamenné.

Terry Posters credits Miroslav Němeček with the design. Posteritati additionally mentions Jaroslav Osecký.

First edition, Souvenir Press, London, 1974

A convincing combination of two contrasting typefaces, the monolithic caps of Neil Bold and the accomplished italics of Caslon 540 with swash capitals, on the jacket of a non-fiction book by English writer Alan Lloyd (1927–2018):

At Marathon, the site of the key battle between Greek and Persian armies, independence and a radical new political form were at stake. Through an overview of the religion, culture, and alliances among city-states, this historical account adds depth and context to the battle that safeguarded the autonomy of Greek life, allowed for the development of a cultural foundation for Western civilization, and protected the young democratic government. Detailing the stories of brutal fighting, Philippides’ final run proclaiming news of victory, and the powerful political changes that took shape immediately after, this vivid description provides the details of a pivotal moment in Western history.

The same design was used for Readers Union’s edition, Newton Abbot, 1975

Published by Éditions Non Standard (and co-published with Ésad Amiens), the book SANS (FR) 1628-1924 is written and designed by Sébastien Morlighem. For the typography, Moulin is used in two weights: Regular for the French text, Medium for English.

The aim of the publication is to highlight the irrepressible rise, in France, between the time of the Enlightenment and the beginning of the 20th century, of a form, a thousand-faceted kind of writing, which is often taken for granted and flourishes in common existence. This form is the ‘Sans’, i. e. the letter without serif, or ‘sans-serif’. “Sans” means “without” in French: a preposition indicating what is missing, what is not or no more present.

Moulin, a work-in-progress type family by Sandrine Nugue, is an asymmetrical flared design influenced by classical lettering and Adrian Frutiger’s underappreciated Icone from 1980. The balance of black and white and tension between inner and outer forms give a sculptural rather than calligraphic character, resulting in a comfortable texture for text and an assertive personality at display sizes. The Regular roman and italic are available from the Commercial Type Vault.

Faber & Faber’s first edition of Christopher Priest’s science fiction novel Inverted World has a blue dust jacket with the author’s name and title typeset running sideways in Letraset’s Bombere in white, filling almost the whole front. On the front of the jacket the title also appears set in the top left with the usual horizontal baseline in Times New Roman Bold; the readability of Times has been compromised by printing in black-on-blue. The back jacket has exactly the same design, just with smaller type and without the black Times.

Bombere has a wireframe 3D effect which has a visual ambiguity similar to the Necker cube. A suitable match for the title, Inverted World.

The jacket spine uses Times New Roman Bold Italic in white for the title, and black for the author, but has been “embellished” by reprising the use of Bombere for initial I and W caps.

Underneath the jacket, the book’s spine typesets the title (in all caps) and author in a third typeface, apparently some version of Garamond.

The book was published in 1974, and having long been recognised as a landmark in British Science Fiction, was included in the SF Masterworks collection in 2010. [Wikipedia]

[More info on ISFDB]

The Noord-Hollands Archief has begun to digitise materials from the archives of Joh. Enschedé of Haarlem, one of the longest-existing printing companies. One work this initiative has now made accessible everywhere is the monumental 1978 edition of Dr. Charles Enschedé’s 1908 book Typefoundries in the Netherlands, translated into English and edited by Harry Carter, Netty Hoeflake and Lotte Hellinga and printed by Bram de Does. (See discussion on TypeDrawers here, here.)

The book is handset in metal type, Jan van Krimpen's Romanée. Weighing in at 4.5kg, it includes extensive showings of historic metal types in Enschedé’s collections dating back as far as the fifteenth century, including full character sets and resettings of entire ornamented title pages and page layouts. These were mostly cast and typeset for the 1908 edition: due to the survival of the standing metal type they could be reprinted again for the 1978 edition. The paper was specified by de Does. It's an astonishing experience seeing historic typefaces cast and printed with modern technology, frequently revealing a staggering crispness the printing technology of their time often could not show.

De Does' design uses Romaneé with footnotes and section headings in the margin. A Lombardic capital-style C (see discussion below) is used as a bracket to mark additional information breaking into Enschedé's text. The body text is not set in columns.

Enschedé's 1893 commemoration of the foundry's 150th anniversary has also been digitised by Google.

Page layout, with footnotes at the bottom of the page.

Pages 404-5, display layout of modern-face types

Interlaced capitals of c. 1578, probably by Hendrik van den Keere (see John A. Lane’s 1995 article and 2004 book on the Plantin-Moretus collections, p. 42.) The Lombardic initial C is used as a bracket indicating an addition to Enschedé's original text. The translation uses ‘fount’, the normal use for metal type.

Engrossing initials, perhaps conceived by Willem Silvius. There were similar ‘secretary’ script types around the same time, both in the Low Countries and in London, and the James foundry had two in the spectacular “court hand” style. Both styles appear in an auction specimen of 1782; there's some more information in Carter and Ricks’ edition of Rowe Mores, pp. 112-3.

The oldest roman type for which matrices survive, Cologne, c. 1527. Enschedé were able to fill out the character set through electrotyping and cutting replacement characters.

Typographia·1, created, designed, and letterpress printed by Leonard F. Bahr in 1976 at the Adagio Press, Harper Woods, Michigan, using handset metal type, notably Pascal, Palatino, and Jaguar, as shown here. Published as a sewn booklet of 28 text pages plus cover. There was a follow-up publication, Typographia·2. The private press work of Leonard F. Bahr was commemorated in an exhibition at the University of Michigan Library in 1993, together with the publication of Adagio: A Checklist, edited by Wesley B. Tanner and Erik C. Alstrom, with a preface by Paul Hayden Duensing.

The colophon is set in Century Catalogue Italic and Century Oldstyle.

Front and back cover of Morphology of the Folktale by Soviet folklorist and scholar Vladimir Propp (1895–1970), first published in Leningrad in 1928. The English translation by University of Texas Press was first issued in 1968. The images show the eleventh edition, printed in 1990. Chances are the same design with Serpentine (VGC, 1972) was already used for previous editions.

This QSL card for U.S. Navy sailor (and ham) Jack H. Reese makes strong use of Neon (and a ferocious engraving of a bald eagle). Supplemental text front and back is set in Kabel (or Sans Serif). Note that the diamond shaped ARRL logo is still in use as of 2020.

The fine drawings and paintings by Stanley Roy Badmin (1906–1989) have rather come to epitomise “England’s landscapes” and he was exceptional gifted when it came to the illustration of natural scenes and trees in particular. His work encompassed paintings, commissioned works for adverts and posters, as well as illustrations for many books. This is a particularly luscious example of his art from a 1952 book of “Famous Trees” by Richard St Barbe Baker and published by the private Dropmore Press. The frontispiece is of the Panshanger Oak in Hertfordshire that still stands with a girth of 7.6m and was recorded as being a fine tree as far back as 1789 by Gilbert White. It stood in the grounds of Panshanger House that was demolished soon after this sketch (between 1952 and 1954) and the grounds are now used for gravel extraction.

From Wikipedia:

The Bundesjugendspiele (“Federal Youth Games”) are an annual sports event that takes place at German schools and German international schools. They are obligatory for all students. […] The performances achieved are rated with points. If the participant achieves a specific minimum score, they are given a simple certificate. Above a certain higher score they receive an ‘honorary certificate’, which bear the (printed) signature of the Federal President.

The honorary certificate (Ehrenurkunde) as used in the 1960s features a special combination of typefaces: While the text is set in Diotima-Kursiv by Gudrun Zapf-von Hesse, the heading is in Saphir by her husband Hermann.

Source: www.besserewelt.at License: All Rights Reserved.

Zwischen Spartakus und Sozialdemokratie [tr: Between Spartacus and Social Democracy] by Paul Levi, 1969

Paperback series with political texts jointly published by Europäische Verlagsanstalt Frankfurt (Germany) and Europa Verlag Wien (Austria) in the late 1960s. The covers were designed by August Bachmeier, exclusively using Stempel Garamond. The text is positioned in an oblong framed by a fine line, with the series title aligned to the top, and the volume’s title to the bottom. The author’s name appears on top of the latter, in the same size, but in italics. The publishers’ names is shown at the very bottom, outside the rectangle, at a smaller point size. Stempel Garamond is used with its ligatures for ch (non-touching) and ft (see Feuerbach, Luxemburg).

Source: www.abebooks.co.uk License: All Rights Reserved.

Das Recht auf Faulheit by Paul Lafargue, 1966

Source: www.zvab.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Marxismus und Philosophie by Karl Korsch, 1966

Source: www.booklooker.de Licus Media. License: All Rights Reserved.

Anthropologischer Materialismus. Ausgewählte Schriften I by Ludwig Feuerbach, 1967

Source: www.amazon.de License: All Rights Reserved.

Karl Marx by Karl Korsch, 1967

Source: www.iberlibro.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Politische Schriften I–III by Rosa Luxemburg, 1966–1968

This leaflet advertised the fifth German edition of Edward Johnston’s Writing & Illuminating & Lettering from 1955. Published in English in 1906, the handbook was translated by Anna Simons, a former student of Johnston at the Royal College of Art, and first issued in German by Klinkhardt & Biermann in 1910. More editions followed in 1921, 1928, and 1936. Together with Simons’s work as a teacher, Schreibschrift, Zierschrift und angewandte Schrift had a great impact on the renewed interest in modern penmanship and lettering and the dissemination of Johnston’s ideas in German-speaking countries.

The front page of the leaflet is a reproduction of the book’s jacket. The title and the author’s name are shown in reverse on a brown open scroll, in Weiß-Antiqua and Weiß-Kursiv, the latter with several of its ligatures for ch and ft. The scroll is framed by an almost full set of Weiß-Initialen II including the alternate A and E, but skipping the J, in olive green. The typeface used for the text on the other pages likewise echoes the choice made for the book: It’s Stempel Garamond with italics and small caps. The Saxon State and University Library Dresden (SLUB) has a digitization of the full book complete with the jacket.

Established in 1907 in Leipzig, Klinkhardt & Biermann relocated to Berlin in 1933 and again to Braunschweig in 1948. Co-founder Werner Klinkhardt (1882–1926) is a descendant of Julius Klinkhardt (1810–1881), the Leipzig-based publisher and type founder.

A synopsis of the book’s contents. Cf. the table of contents as included in the book.

The Trojan War with introductory notes on the Grecian Divinities adaped from the Age of Fable (1855) by Thomas Bulfinch (1796–1867). Privately printed by Kurt H. Volk in 1957. 1st edition, gilt-blocked, decorated linen in slipcase.

[…] produced in a limited edition as a keepsake for his many friends. It was designed by Meyer Wagman and edited by Charles Brodie. It is set in Fairfield [not pictured] and Weiss Initials [No. 2]. Typography and printing by Kurt H. Volk, Inc., New York. — Abebooks

That cover design hasn’t aged a bit. With the big center-aligned caps including a mid-word linebreak and the slightly wonky letterforms, I can very well imagine the same treatment used for a book published in 2019.

Half-title

Title page