The basic logo, to be turned into a neon sign eventually

Cry Baby is “a euphoric cocktail bar” coming to Asheville, North Carolina, in summer 2023. The lovechild of Lexy Rae and Zane Buchholz, Cry Baby will offer cocktails “inspired by martians and basketball.”

Connor Mikita already started working on the bar’s brand design. For the all-caps logo, he unearthed a largely forgotten Art Deco design of unclear origin. The hairline sans with added triangles looks a little as if Broadway (or rather its high-contrast cousin ITC Manhattan) had one martini too much. A film typeface was shown by Castcraft in their 1978 catalog as Ricky Tick, with numerous alternates. Shin Oka of Daylight Fonts points out loose similarities to a piece of lettering by A. Bardi, shown as “Publicité” in Vignettes Lettres Chiffres Monogrammes et Rehauts Modernes, Les Editions Guérinet, Paris, 1931. In 2010, Dick Pape made a freebie digitization named DXS Ricky Tick, based on a showing in Dan X. Solo’s Art Deco Display Alphabets, Dover from 1982.

Ricky Tick is paired with various 1970s (or 1970s-style) typefaces.

Business card featuring the logo in Ricky Tick, with Funkford (2018) for the slogan, “Cry now, cry later”. See Connor’s video for full glory. He comments: “This is most likely the start of a long tradition of gold embossing everything.”

The back of the business card additionally features ITC Pioneer (1970) for the title and phone number.

Announcement graphic with Zipper (1970)

In March 2020, rock band the Nude Party embarked on a two-week-long tour titled “Chasing That Neon Rainbow”. Band member Connor Mikita (Great Indoors) did the poster for it.

His design is a wonderful homage to an album cover from 1970 which I had posted to Fonts In Use previously, see The Nashville Sound: Bright Lights & Country Music. In place of the narrow face with flared stems (see Nottingham) featured in the original, Connor used Roberta. And since there is no digital version of Norton Vaudeville Act 9, he opted for another typeface made of dots, Theater Lights JNL. The dates and venues are added in Marvin Visions.

I wonder whether Connor saw the Nashville Sound cover here or elsewhere. Either way, seeing such a lovely tribute makes me happy!

Orbit Shaded in use on the second single by M’Bamina. Record collector oopswhoops comments:

Excellent Funk/Afrobeat double sider. 1974 French pressing on Barclay label.

M’Bamina (“Lightning”) was formed in late 1972 by six emigres from Congo, Benin and Cameroon in Pavia near Milan, Italy. After the release of their debut album African Roll in 1975, they performed at a landmark concert at Cameroon’s Stade de Yaoundé together with Claude François and Manu Dibango. A year later, the band opened for a James Brown concert in Paris.

[More info on Discogs]

Book covers for Sydney Omarr’s series Astrological Revelations About You, featuring Thorowgood Sans Shaded for the author’s name. The shaded caps are set on a curve, with some fanning applied. The name of the zodiac sign is set in all-caps Anzeigen-Grotesk. Unknown illustrator which is unfortunate considering these incredible illustrations! From circa 1969, Signet Publishers, according to The Peculiar Manicule.

“Hot & Cold” (No. 228) ft. Chwast Blimp and Benguiat Charisma Script. “COLD” appears to be based on Oprescu Fingerprint, with the outer lines removed. All three faces are original designs carried by Photo-Lettering.

Covers for various clip books of line art issued by Volk Corp in 1972. This volume continues the portrait format that was introduced in the year before. Just as in 1970 and 1971, many of the display faces like Brave and Free or Futura Dot are novelties from the extensive catalog of Photo-Lettering. Jolly Roger and the refreshingly blasphemous Helvetica Flair originated at Phil Martin’s Alphabet Innovations. The covers with Countdown and Premier Shaded might be among the earliest examples for Letraset originals used by Volk. On most covers, the line “Clip Book of Line Art” is set in ITC Avant Garde Gothic with alternates for e and A.

See also the dedicated post about the subseries titled Grafika which includes booklets published in 1972. For more information on Harry Volk Jr. Art Studio, see the post about the clip books issued in 1955.

“Distaffers” (No. 227) ft. Kabel Black, contrasted with Kabel Light.

“Holidays” (No. 229) ft. Brave and Free.

“Radio & TV” (No. 230) ft. Goudy Heavyface Italic.

“Insurance” (No. 231) with a graphic depiction of why you might need one, ft. Kabel Black.

“Opposites” (No. 234) ft. all-caps Kabel Black.

“Occupations” (No. 236) ft. Eurostile and Helvetica [see comments].

“Expressions” (No. 240) ft. tightly spaced Charter Oak.

“Mail” (No. 241) ft. Profil. The subline here uses a bolder weight from ITC Avant Garde Gothic, to avoid a too great contrast in weight next to the chunky shadowed slab serif. Illustration by Tom Sawyer.

“Holidays” (No. 242) ft. all-caps Goudy Heavyface Italic, paired with the similar (and earlier) Cooper Black Italic, here distinguished by swash caps.

“Summer” (No. 563) ft. Novel Gothic.

“The Golden Years” (No. 564) ft. Kabel. Sensitive typophiles may cringe at the combination of two very similar typefaces.

“Autumn” (No. 565) ft. Jolly Roger.

“Education” (No. 566) ft. Countdown, designed by Colin Brignall (Letraset, 1965).

“Groups” (No. 567) ft. Premier Shaded, designed by Colin Brignall (Letraset, 1970). Illustration by Tom Sawyer.

“Christmas” (No. 568) ft. Kalligraphia and Helvetica Flair.

“Couples” (No. 569) ft. slanted Futura Dot. The addition “20th Anniversary issue” suggests that Volk was founded in 1952 or 1953. The oldest booklets published in Bart Solenthaler’s collection are from 1954.

“Transportation” (No. 572) ft.Buxom. Just like in “Mail” (No. 241, see above), the weight of “Clip Book of Line Art” is increased to hold up against the heavyweight.

“Sales” (No. 573) ft. Uncle Bill.

“Women” (No. 575), pairing Normande Italic with handwriting.

“Human Relations” (No. 576) ft. Cartier and Windsor for the bottom line.

“Teens” (No. 577) with more Jolly Roger.

Vinyl release, front cover

They Say I'm Different is the second studio album by Betty Davis (b. 1945). It was released in 1974 on Just Sunshine. The cover was designed by Ron Levine, with art direction by Bill Levy and photography by Mel Dixon. Kaisik Wong designed the costume.

The jagged caps are from Sini Aztec, designed by Anthony Sini and offered by Photo-Lettering in solid and outlined styles. In 2011, Jess Collins digitized it for House Industries. The track names and other small print is in Trade Gothic Bold Extended.

[More info on Discogs]

Vinyl release, back cover

Adaptation for a CD (?) re-release, with bigger type in two lines, stacked and justified

Center-aligned credits in Trade Gothic Bold Extended, from the inner gatefold

The Just Sunshine Records logo as seen on the labels uses an outlined style of Nelson Cumulus, with orange fill and set on a curve. The black text appears to be in an adaptation of Vogue, with some of its alternate glyphs. [Edit: Bryson Stohr identified it as Sans Serif (VariTyper).]

The distributor’s line uses Optima.

Single record cover for “East Coast Groove” / “Disco Stomp” by Bohannon. The track titles are set in tight-not-touching ITC Avant Garde Gothic. Bohannon’s name is set in loosely spaced Rhythmic Shaded.

At the time of this design, Rhythmic Shaded was available under different names: it was simply named Rhythmic in Berthold’s E1 catalogue in 1974, and shown in a 1970s Typeshop catalog as Rhyme Drop Shaded.

Regal Zonophone (EMI Group), UK 1971.

Live! is an album recorded in 1971 by Fela Kuti (1938–1997) and his band Africa ’70. Former Cream drummer Ginger Baker is featured on two songs. The cover typography uses Mick Chave’s Marvin which had been added to the Letraset range just around this time.

Signpost Records (SP 8401), USA, 1971

Wild And Peaceful (1973) was the fourth album by the American funk band Kool & the Gang, and their commercial breakthrough album. The record contains a few hits including “Jungle Boogie”, which became very popular in nightclubs; it was also used as a musical background in the opening titles of Pulp Fiction some twenty years after its release.

“Jungle Boogie” is just so awesome! Funkiest song ever recorded in my opinion, sorry James, Sly, Parliament, and whoever else, but Kool & the Gang has it. Everything about it is shear perfection. (...) I played this for a girl I was dating one time and she said she'd never heard the song before. Needless to say, that relationship didn't last long. — Dick_B1, rateyourmusic.com

The band name and the album title are set on a curve with Benguiat Downsie (Photo-Lettering, Inc., ca. 1971). A reversed contrast display type, with a design similar to Gothic Bold (1899) and Zipper (1970) but made in four differently shaded versions. For this album, Richard Askew used variant “C”, with a solid shade, and combined it with art by Joseph Askew. The back cover uses Univers, and the text on the stickers is set with Frankfurter.

The image shows the back cover of the French release on Musidisc.

The cover of the official soundtrack to Shaft uses Pioneer. So does the movie poster. The record covers depicted here feature Pioneer, too — but it’s a completely different typeface. Designed by Francisco Gonzales, it was shown in PLINC’s Alphabet Yearbook 1969. A year later, ITC released an unrelated (albeit also shaded all-caps) typeface designed by Tom Carnase and Ronné Bonder under the same name. While ITC Pioneer is still around, the earlier Gonzales Pioneer is largely forgotten. I wonder if its appearance here is just a coincidence, or if it was picked by mistake, due to a name mix-up.

Music from the movie Shaft, arranged by Sy Mann, composed by Isaac Hayes, and performed by Soul Mann & The Brothers. Originally released in 1971 by Pickwick Records, with a cover design by David Lartaud and Frank Daniel [Discogs] that was used in similar form for other editions, too.

Cover adaptation as used for the UK release on Hallmark Records, among others. Mack Browne & The Brothers is an alias of Soul Mann & The Brothers.

Art Direction: The Graffiteria / David Krieger. Creative Direction: Larry Shaw, Ron Gorden. Photography: Joel Brodsky.

The light type for “Jean Knight” is unknown to me.

[More info on Discogs]

Source: www.abebooks.co.uk Jo's Books. License: All Rights Reserved.

Goodbye, Columbus, 1974

For those among you who still haven’t seen enough Philip Roth covers with too many swashes, here’s the UK paperback series by Corgi Books.

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

The Breast

Source: www.bidorbuy.co.za License: All Rights Reserved.

Letting Go

Source: produto.mercadolivre.com.br (edited). License: All Rights Reserved.

The Great American Novel, 1974

The Trials of the Lancashire Witches. A Study of Seventeenth Century Witchcraft by Edgar Peel & Pat Southern, second edition from 1972. The cover typography combines two typefaces that both are quintessentially mid-1960s/early 1970s, and yet couldn’t be farther apart. The italic serif with hippyish swashes is what Mark Simonson refers to as Sixties Bookman in the history included in his Bookmania specimen (pdf):

It’s closest to the larger sizes of ATF Bookman Oldstyle, but significantly bolder, with more contrast between the thicks and thins than other Bookmans and with smaller serifs. Sixties Bookman expanded on ATF Bookman’s modest but distinctive swash character repertoire with 25 in the roman and 47 in the italic.

Marvin (1969) by contrast is very much unadorned. It’s made from simple monolinear strokes and has no lowercase, and certainly no swashes. With its technoid look, it became a staple for covers of science fiction books. For contemporary stand-ins, see Marvin Visions and Bookmania.

Paperback edition

Hardcover edition with dust jacket

Hmm...what font should we use for this frankfurter?

24312 Del Prado Dana Point, CA (Across from Brookside Winery)

Astronauts & Androids (1977), edited by George H. Scithers. Cover art by Frank Kelly Freas [The Internet Speculative Fiction Database]

Asimov’s Choice is a series of science fiction anthologies edited by George H. Scithers and L. Sprague de Camp with Isaac Asimov and published by Dale Books, an imprint of Davis Publications.

The main typeface on the covers of the first three books from 1977 — Astronauts & Androids, Black Holes & Bug-Eyed-Monsters, The Queen of Zamba — is Benguiat Charisma Script Shaded. The heavy script is just one of over 600 typefaces designed by Ed Benguiat, who was born on this day in 1927. Happy 90th birthday, Ed!

The accompanying Clarendon is another face by Photo-Lettering, Inc. — Dave West’s Behemoth. Later volumes (Extraterrestrials & Eclipses, Comets & Computers, Dark Stars & Dragons, 1978) have less exciting covers featuring a condensed grotesque.

Black Holes & Bug-Eyed-Monsters (1977), edited by George H. Scithers. Cover art by Frank Kelly Freas

The Queen of Zamba (The Cosmic Manhunt) (1977), edited by L. Sprague de Camp. Cover art by Jack Gaughan

Title page

Paperback Library/Warner edition, 1972

A Trace of Memory was first published by Berkley in 1963. The image above shows the Paperback Library/Warner edition from September 1972. When Tor published their paperback edition in 1984 (shown below), they stuck with Marvin for the cover typography, but took it a notch further: The hyper-extended glyphs play up the typeface’s nature of plain curves and straights, and fit Marvin to a T.

“There are some things man was not meant to remember …”

Tor edition, 1984

Wattstax was a historic benefit concert that took place at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on August 20, 1972, to commemorate the 1965 Watts riots in the community of Watts, Los Angeles. The concert, organized by Stax Records, was filmed for a documentary and recordings of the highlight performances were released as a double-LP titled Wattstax: The Living Word.

The concert, film, and album were branded with ITC Pioneer, following in the footsteps of the Shaft movie and its soundtrack that was released by Stax the year before, featuring music by Isaac Hayes who was one of the headline performers at Wattstax.

Not unlike the wave of 8-bit video game art that would follow a few years later.

[More info on Discogs]