Peter Nero was an American pianist who passed away in 2023 at the age of 89. This album with easy listening arrangements of “the great love songs of today” was released in 1970.

The artist name is set in Didot Medium, while the album title between the artist's name along with the song list on the left is written in Futura Light. The photography is credited to John Lawler.

[More info on Discogs]

This Letraset Catalogue of Instant Lettering Typefaces & Other Graphic Art Products was published by Letraset Limited, London, in 1966.

The cover makes use of the then freshly released Annlie, which was one of the instant lettering fonts you could buy specimen sheets of. The page is set tight-not-touching in all caps.

Covers for the first two issues of Typografia from 1966, both using Normande with perspective effects. Typografia was the technical journal of Czechoslovak printers. It was published by Práce; Stanislav Souček served as the Managing Editor at the time.

The cover designs are by Vladislav Najbrt (b. 1936), who in the 1990s renewed publication of Typografia and headed the journal until its demise in 2015.

For more information about the issues including a list of the contents, see the original posts on Flickr.

A grape of sixes, from page 1 in Typografia 1/1966

McClelland and Stewart edition, 1980. Design by William Fox / Associates.

From Wikipedia:

Joshua Then and Now is a Canadian novel written by Mordecai Richler, published in 1980 by McClelland and Stewart. A semi-autobiographical novel, the book is based his life on his neighborhood growing up in Montreal, Quebec, and tells of the life of a writer. Richler later adapted the novel into the feature film Joshua Then and Now, starring James Woods, Alan Arkin, and Gabrielle Lazure; directed by Ted Kotcheff who had previously directed Richler's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.

William Fox / Associates is credited for the jacket design of the first edition by McClelland and Stewart, which uses a Didot – possibly Beaux Arts Didot? – in all caps. When Alfred A. Knopf published the first US edition, Lawrence Ratzkin followed the basic design, but mixed things up: he used Didi with glyphs in different sizes and selectively elongated and shortened parts, set on a bouncing baseline.

Alfred A. Knopf edition, 1980. Design by Lawrence Ratzkin.

Alfred A. Knopf edition, 1980

Clothes made with love in Italy, Switzerland and Japan. Rosanna Bühler is a boutique with shops in Neuchâtel, Verbier, and Lausanne.

The visual identity was made by Florine Bonaventure, using Waldenburg Schwarz and Normal together with Times Ten Roman and Italic. The formal script used for the matchboxes (“Burn, baby, burn”) and the gift cards (“For You”) is Snell Roundhand Black.

Third novel by American writer Don Carpenter (1931–1995), published in 1971, five years after his debut Hard Rain Falling. Pistilli Roman is used in tight-not-touching caps, using a tilde as hyphen.

The “I Maestri dell’Architettura contemporanea” series of architectural monographs was launched in 1960 by Milanese publisher Il Saggiatore in collaboration with New York-based George Braziller, Inc. It ran until 1964, totalling 16 titles all designed by the outstanding Anita Klinz (1923–2013) using Nebiolo's Cairoli (the Tonda Nerissima weight, all in lowercase) as well as Simoncini Garamond (a staple of Italian publishing, then as now) in all-caps.

Cairoli was Nebiolo’s name for a typeface design that originated at the German punchcutting firm Wagner & Schmidt – which sold matrices to various European foundries. It was cast by Ludwig Wagner as Neue moderne Grotesk in four weights, with the boldest one also known as Reichs-Grotesk. Other names include Aurora-Grotesk by Weber and Accidenz-Grotesk by Haas.

See Luca Pitoni’s wonderful book Ostinata bellezza. Anita Klinz, la prima art director italiana (2023) for more on Klinz’s remarkable life and career.

Rouleur logo

Rouleur is a British cycling magazine founded by Guy Andrews and first published in May 2006 by sportswear brand Rapha and later as a part of Gruppo Media Ltd.

The Rouleur logo is based on Clarendon. It’s not out-of-the-box Clarendon, though: the designer made some modifications. We find a number of tightly spaced pairs, effectively forming custom ligatures. The spur of R is linked to the bowl of o. The serifs of u and l are merged as well as, and so are those of u and r.

The magazine takes the direction of vintage publications with covers composed of analog photo illustrations, with a certain taste for simplicity in a mid-century spirit. Clarendon is often used for its vintage qualities: with serifs, yet quite modern.

From Rouleur:

The finest cycling journal in the world, published eight times a year. Each issue is classic and collectable, bringing together the very best cycling writers and photographers to convey the essence, passion and beauty of road racing.

Rouleur no. 1, May 2006, with a cover photograph by Ben Ingham

Rouleur no. 2

Rouleur no. 18.2

Rouleur no. 30

Rouleur, Tour de France 2019 special issue, designed by Thomas Danthony.

Rouleur no. 119, 2023

Slipcase with all 14 books

Between 1925 and 1930, the Bauhaus published a series of 14 books, authored by teachers and friends of the legendary design school. The titles discussed the ideas of the Bauhaus in art, design and architecture. In response to the Bauhaus Centennial in 2019, all 14 Bauhausbücher were re-issued in 2021 by Lars Müller Publishers in collaboration with Bauhaus-Archiv / Museum für Gestaltung in a English translation, preserving the original typography and design.

The digital re-issue required the use of digital revivals of the original typefaces used – four of those books utilise LD Genzsch Antiqua by Michael Wörgötter / Lazydogs as their main text face: Book 10 Dutch Architecture by Jacobus Johannes Pieter Oud, Book 11 The Non-Objective World by Kasimir Malevich, Book 13 Cubism by Albert Gleizes, and Book 14 From Material to Architecture by László Moholy-Nagy. The typeface’s original features such as the historical hyphen and the em dash enable a redesign true to the original publication.

Book jacket of Dutch Architecture feat. Akzidenz-Grotesk fett

Pages 26–27 from Dutch Architecture feat. LD Genzsch Antiqua and Akzidenz-Grotesk. The caption uses an unidentified font, see comments.

Pages 28–29 from Dutch Architecture feat. LD Genzsch Antiqua and Akzidenz-Grotesk

Book jacket of Cubism with the English title added in Helvetica Inserat or similar, see comments

Pages 84–85 from Dutch Architecture feat. LD Genzsch Antiqua and Akzidenz-Grotesk

Double-page spread from Cubism feat. LD Genzsch Antiqua and what looks like Helvetica Extended

Pages 84–85 from Cubism feat. LD Genzsch Antiqua and Helvetica. Page numbers appear to be from Akzidenz-Grotesk Super.

Book jacket of From Material to Architecture, with the English title added in what looks like Akzidenz-Grotesk Bold

Pages 92–93 from From Material to Architecture feat. LD Genzsch Antiqua and Akzidenz-Grotesk (in Bold and Super weights)

Pages 96–97 from From Material to Architecture feat. LD Genzsch Antiqua and Akzidenz-Grotesk. The caption on the right is set in a digitization of Neue Moderne Grotesk, with the paragraph below in Volta.

Heaven/Earth is a 1969 album from pop vocal group The Free Design.

The cover features the band name and album title set in Caslon No. 471 with its italic swash glyphs for the capitals, and roman for the lowercase. The album included a gatefold cover, with the heading and drop caps from another Caslon – probably (a version of) ATF’s Caslon Bold, of which the larger sizes were copied as Caslon 3.

[More info on Discogs]

Gatefold

Back cover

Poster, Ptaki [The Birds], 1963–65; offset lithograph on wove paper, mounted on canvas; 83.6×58.9 cm (32 15/16 × 23 3/16 in.); Gift of Sara and Marc Benda; 2010-21-7

On Fonts In Use, Bronisław Zelek (1935–2018) is mostly represented through his typefaces Zelek and New Zelek. Zelek was not a full-time type designer, though: he primarily worked as graphic artist, poster designer, and painter. We have documented two of his poster designs before, for Głód (1967) and Jazz Jamboree 68 (1968).

Shown here is one of Zelek’s most striking posters, designed only a few years after he graduated from Henryk Tomaszewski’s class at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts in 1961. It’s a movie poster made for the Polish release of Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963).

Instead of depicting birds directly, Zelek opted for a winged skull to symbolize the mortal threat. The dead’s head leads a flock of words which repeat the title – ptaki is Polish for birds – countless times. Still small and orderly at the top, the words grow larger, unrulier and more aggressive toward the bottom, in an extraordinary typographic translation of the swelling sound of screeching birds with beating wings.

Zelek used various capitalizations to increase the diversity of “species”: all caps, all lowercase, title case. Among the fonts in use are Akzidenz-Grotesk and a number of metal typefaces by the Polish foundry Jan Idźkowski i S-ka, all of which are more or less directly derived from designs that originated in Germany: the slab serif is Nil półgruby, which is based on Stempel’s Memphis halbfett. The roman with the round-bellied a is the extrabold weight of Ratio-Latein, also by Stempel, which was cast by Idźkowski under the name Modena gruba. The italic looks like Berthold’s Augustea-Kursiv, known in Poland as Szkolna Sejmowa kursywa.

Last but not least, there’s Baccarat półgruby, sometimes called Baccarat półtłusty, which is also used for the credits at the top. This wide sans is a version of a design that originated at Wagner & Schmidt, and went under more than a dozen different names, including Edel-Grotesk halbfett (at Ludwig Wagner) or Aurora-Grotesk VII breit halbfett (at C.E. Weber). Idźkowski’s Baccarat family is an amalgamation of various wide styles from Edel-Grotesk / Aurora-Grotesk VI–VII, Annonce / Aurora-Grotesk V, and Industria Gravur. In January 2023, Mateusz Machalski released Sztos, designed with support from Małgorzata Bartosik and Karol Mularczyk. This family “is a remix of one of the most famous grotesques used in Poland – Baccarat”.

Małgorzata is currently working on a book about Bronisław Zelek, titled In the enchanted land of letters. As a matter of course, it also contains the famous Ptaki poster, as well as a later cycle of paintings that continues this work. For typesetting the book, she’s using New Zelek and also Sztos – full circle! If you want to get your hands on a copy of this monograph, there is a crowdfunding campaign. But you need to hurry, it will end very soon (March 31).

Cover for the 1991 Accolade, Inc. computer game software catalog, featuring a mix of seemingly incompatible fonts, which was a popular post-modern trend in the late 1980s and early 1990s. From Wikipedia:

Accolade, Inc. (later Infogrames North America, Inc.) was an American video game developer and publisher based in San Jose, California. The company was founded as Accolade in 1984 by Alan Miller and Bob Whitehead, who had previously co-founded Activisionin 1979. The company became known for numerous sports game series, including HardBall!, Jack Nicklaus and Test Drive.

Other type treatments found in the catalog’s interior pages can be seen at the Internet Archive.

Example of the Interior pages of the catalog. The justified, multi-colored text on the left page is Neue Helvetica 55 Roman. On the right page, “Golf” is ITC American Typewriter Medium Condensed, “NEW” is Compacta Light, the body and caption text is a mix between Neue Helvetica 57 Condensed and 77 Condensed Bold. (The text of the game – over the image of Jack Nicklaus – is Cheltenham Condensed, in caps with small caps.)

Front cover of Channel 1, released June 2000

Channel is a series of leftfield, electro and electroclash music compilation mixes released between 2000 to 2005. The channels range from one to four and feature a roster of British and international artists in a tracklist of 10 to 15 tracks, including Yello, LCD Soundsystem, Lopazz, and others.

Trevor Jackson, the founder of the now-defunct “highly acclaimed” Output Recordings (1996–2006), was known for designing the covers himself in the independent label’s art director role.

The first in this installment (released in June 2000) features a hot pink background (except fluorescent orange in the 2005 copies, not pictured) and text set in Berthold’s Akzidenz-Grotesk Bold, which was also used for the CD-R version (not pictured) released with Source UK, a tradename of the French label Source, but in a background of silver filled on the cover and the text being aligned on the centre above.

However, from Channel 2 to Channel 4, the band names on the front and track names on the back are a circus maelstrom of fonts with various backgrounds, including monochrome in two variants (one being white and black, the second being black on white) and metallic gold (pictured) and metallic silver (not pictured).

These fonts include classics from the metal type era as well as the 1970s/80s dry-transfer and phototypesetting years (including designs by ITC, Letraset, Mecanorma, VGC, Fotostar/Fascimile Fonts, and Photo-Lettering) in the styles of Art Deco, Victorian, Art Nouveau, geometric, etc. Note especially the early use of Tank by Canadian type designer Ray Larabie (in the 2004 compilation cover which by the way was possibly inspired by ITC Machine from 1970) and Boback from Nathan Williams’ Baseline Fonts foundry (not released until 2006) [edit: it’s probably the earlier Serifedsans].

Back cover, in left-aligned text and two columns

Channel Two, released April 2003: Centaur (Bruce Rogers, Monotype, 1928), Cooper Black (Oswald Bruce Cooper, Barnhart Brothers and Spindler, 1922), ITC Symbol (Aldo Novarese, 1984), Abbot Old Style (Joseph W. Phinney, ATF, 1901), Albertus (Berthold Wolpe, Monotype, 1936), Cottonwood (Barbara Lind et al., Adobe, 1989), Old English (Monotype, an adaptation of ATF Cloister Black, 1904), Memphis Bold (Rudolf Wolf, 1931), Studio (Dick Dooijes and Dolf Overbeek, Amsterdam Type Foundry, 1946), Too Much Shadow (Bill Seifert, VGC, 1974), Karnak Bold Condensed (Robert Hunter Middleton, Ludlow, 1931), Boback (Baseline Fonts, released ca. 2006, documented early use of an Alternate Gothic with serifs on the bottom) [edit: it’s probably the earlier Serifedsans], Helvetica Condensed (outlined, Stempel/Linotype), ITC Avant Garde Gothic (Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnase, 1970) and Hamilton (Font Bureau, 1993).

Back cover

Channel 3, released in June 2004 (pictured behind is the pink cover): Agraphicus (VGC before 1982, digitized by WSI in 1996 as Arruba), Tank (Ray Larabie of Typodermic, 2004 – the year this album was released in), ITC Busorama (Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnase, the creators of Avant Garde Gothic, 1970), Buxom (Bob Trogman of Fotostar/Fascimile, 1975), ITC Pioneer (Ronné Bonder, 1970), ITC Serif Gothic (Herb Lubalin and Tony Di Spigna, 1972), a condensed sans (probably a bolder style of FF Meta or similar), Shatter (Vic Carless, Letraset, 1973), Futura Black (Paul Renner, Bauer, 1929), Clarendon (Hermann Eidenbenz, Haas, 1953), Umbra (Robert H. Middleton, Ludlow, 1932), ITC American Typewriter Light (Tony Stan and Joel Kaden, 1974), and Raphael (Central Type Foundry, 1885)

Back cover with copyright and remix text in Helvetica (Max Miedinger, Haas, 1957)

Example spread of booklet that comes with the tracklist

Channel 4, released in September 2005: Fiorello (Photo-Lettering Inc., before 1965), Futura Light (Paul Renner, Bauer, 1927), Blackline (Wolf Magin, Berthold, 1973), Shotgun (J. Looney, VGC, 1972), ITC Busorama (see Channel 3 for info, here used with the asymmetrical A), ITC Zapf International (Hermann Zapf, 1977), Isabella (Herman Ihlenburg; MacKellar, Smiths and Jordan; 1892), Novel Gothic (shaded variant as seen in Solotype’s 3-D and Shaded Alphabets; Charles H. Becker and Morris F. Benton, ATF, 1928), Crypt, Sauce (unknown), University Roman (Letraset, 1972), Cooper Black (outlined variant) and ITC Serif Gothic Bold.

Back cover

Spine

Czechoslovak posters for the 1964 musical comedy film A Hard Day’s Night directed by Richard Lester. The film starring The Beatles was first released in Czechoslovakia in 1965, titled Perný den (“busy day”), announced by a poster designed by Karel Vaca. The shown posters are for a later re-release, though: they were made in 1978 by Czech photographer and graphic designer Pavel Jasanský (1938–2021).

Jasanský used ITC Avant Garde Gothic, exclusively in caps from two weights, with appropriately tight spacing and a custom thin and flat acute accent. “Beatles” features a special EA pair – it’s one of several capital ligatures included in the typeface design by Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnase.

Mini poster (A4 / 12″×8″), with copy set in Vega by Stanislav Maršo.

Double-sided poster (front)

Double-sided poster (back)

Ganja & Hess (1973) is an experimental horror movie written and directed by Bill Gunn starring Marlene Clark and Duane Jones.

The logo is made with ITC Avant Garde Gothic, using two of its iconic ligatures (GA, SS) and the alternate left-leaning A. While the phototype version of Avant Garde did include some biform alternates for A E I M N R, the narrow N and the J used here appear to be custom additions. So is the angled e with horizontal terminal.

The movie poster shows a bolder logo variant with some differences in the detail. Supporting text is set in ITC Avant Garde Gothic, too.

A series of booklets on site-specific art, published in six editions between 1971 and 1973 by Obzor, Bratislava. [Fellner Art Books]

Workprint Opening title.

Blade Runner enjoyed multiple editions starting even before the release. Seven major edits are known to the public today, including Workprint (pre-theatrical), US-theatrical, International-theatrical, Director's Cut, and Final Cut which are available. In terms of changes in typography, the Workprint and the theatrical cuts are the main focus.

In the Workprint, the title starts with Impact, followed by a pseudo-dictionary definition of replicant set in Helvetica and Goudy. The rest of the title is set in Goudy, including the ending credit.

In the theatrical release, together with the addition of Harrison Ford’s narration and the “happy ending”, the type choice was unified, now only using Goudy. A common misunderstanding among those who have not seen Blade Runner is that it is an action film, and the use of large Impact does seem to suggest the tone that way, which feels misleading. With the thorough use of Goudy, the audience’s expectation is set better. The typography remains the same thereafter.

Workprint Opening title.

Workprint Opening title.

Theatrical Cut opening title.

Theatrical Cut opening title.

Theatrical Cut opening title.

License: All Rights Reserved.

Shortly after being sentenced to jail time for the Eros periodical he started with Herb Lubalin, Ralph Ginzburg launched Fact magazine in 1964, again enlisting Lubalin as art director. Fact focused largely on political issues and was known for its scathingly satirical takedowns of everyone from Bobby Kennedy to Reader’s Digest to the entire American automobile industry (a young Ralph Nader contributed research on that topic). One issue focusing on the mental fitness of conservative presidential candidate Barry Goldwater even led to a lawsuit and eventually the closure of the publication.

License: All Rights Reserved.

Following the hard-hitting style of the content, the publication’s design is similarly stark and upfront. Especially with the earlier issues, the covers were mostly simple, monochrome, no frills, and purely typographic – using very basic but well-considered settings of Times. Later issues would feature other common typefaces, with only a couple utilizing custom lettering.

As Alexander Tochilosky describes it for Flat File:

Economy was essential for the magazine’s budget, so Lubalin chose a small black and white format. The inside layout was a simple, quiet, two-column grid of Times Roman. The tone however was set by the striking, bold and text-only covers. Lubalin understood that Fact magazine was all about the attitude, and as a great art director knew when design should take a step back.

In typical Lubalin style, many of the covers are set with “TNT” (tight-not-touching) spacing, often with the text filling the page as large as possible.

Most of the type for the magazine appears to come from versions of common typefaces as offered by either Photo-Lettering and/or Aaron Burns & Co, Inc. This isn’t particularly surprising given that Lubalin often worked with Burns and Photo-Lettering’s founder, Ed Rondthaler. (Lubalin, Rondthaler, and Burns would eventually team up to launch ITC in 1970.) A promotional photo of Ginzburg and Fact co-editor Warren Boroson even shows a type specimen booklet from Aaron Burns & Co, Inc. scattered among rulers, sizing gauges, and previous issues of Fact.

License: All Rights Reserved.

A photo of Ralph Ginzburg (standing, with hat) and Warren Boroson from an ad for The Best of Fact in the final issue of Fact magazine shows a type specimen book from Aaron Burns & Co., Inc.

In Tochilovsky’s write-up of Fact, he also describes the simple ingenuity of Lubalin’s design for the publication’s logo:

It was drawn by Tom Carnase, and based on Caslon 540—with the ‘f’ slightly modified to mimic the ‘t’. But the ingenious part is the addition of the colon. It’s not part of the name, but was Lubalin’s graphic invention. It’s genius because it makes you read the headline of the cover beginning with the word “fact”.

Below are all 23 covers of Fact, including both cover variants for volume 2 issue 2. The scans were made from originals in the Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design & Typography at Cooper Union. Many thanks to Alexander Tochilovsky for being so generous with the Center’s materials.

License: All Rights Reserved.

License: All Rights Reserved.

License: All Rights Reserved.

License: All Rights Reserved.

License: All Rights Reserved.

License: All Rights Reserved.

License: All Rights Reserved.

License: All Rights Reserved.

License: All Rights Reserved.

License: All Rights Reserved.

License: All Rights Reserved.

License: All Rights Reserved.

License: All Rights Reserved.

License: All Rights Reserved.

License: All Rights Reserved.

License: All Rights Reserved.

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License: All Rights Reserved.

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License: All Rights Reserved.

License: All Rights Reserved.

Launched in 1972, “Folio” is the paperback imprint of French literary giant Éditions Gallimard. It is the most famous series of livres de poche (pocket books) in France, whose meteoric rise (15 million copies were sold in the first six years of activity alone) owes a great deal to its iconic cover template, designed by Gallimard’s then art director, Robert Massin (1925–2020).

Influenced by Swiss designer Celestino Piatti’s work for German publisher DTV (Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag), Massin chose a white background with black type stacked at the top of the format, but selected a classic, ranged-left, seriffed roman, Baskerville Old Face (a.k.a. Fry’s Baskerville), instead of going for the full modernist outlook (Akzidenz Grotesk Medium, flush-right) favoured by Piatti.

The rest of the cover was entrusted to a vast roster of illustrators, painters or photographers, whose visual pyrotechnics resulted in images which have since then become deeply ingrained in the collective consciousness: for several generations of French readers, L’Étranger (The Stranger) by Albert Camus, for instance, is forever associated with Alexis Oussenko’s allusive watercolour, while David Levine’s caricature of Jean-Paul Sartre (originally published in The New York Review of Books in 1969) is arguably, thanks to its appearance on the cover of Les Mots (Words), one of the most enduring portraits of the radical Left-Bank philosopher and novelist.

Massin’s outstanding contribution to Gallimard’s success — and to French book design at large — has been the subject of this excellent book by Laetitia Wolff.