A publication for Blackout, a fictional exhibition that would celebrate and commemorate the 30 year anniversary of the birth of Hip-Hop culture after the Blackout of New York City in 1977.

Anthony Vernerey, an ENSAD student, designed the cover of this remix by IKMN using a combination of three typefaces: Droulers, Mars Extended (IKMN) & Eurostile Extended Light (Edition).

Nightstand Books 1785, 1966. Dean Hudson was a pseudonym of Evan Hunter.

Cover design based on the painting Fall (1963) by Bridget Riley (thanks to Michael Mechthold-Jin). The title typeface is the Tonda Nera style of either Microgramma (1952) or Eurostile (1962).

The back repeats the front cover, mirrored.

Cover photography by Richard Boon

Released on 29 January 1977, Spiral Scratch was the debut EP by Manchester band Buzzcocks, and the first punk record to be self-released. From Wikipedia:

Simon Reynolds, in his book Rip It Up and Start Again, states that some consider Spiral Scratch to be a more important record than the Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy in the U.K.”, because whereas the Sex Pistols’ single showed that anyone could be in a rock band (a novel idea at the time), Spiral Scratch proved that anyone could release a record, without needing an established record label, of which there were very few in 1977.

Unlike the Sex Pistols’ artwork with the ostentatious DIY ransom note style, the Buzzcocks’ cover typography is remarkably straightforward, featuring two mainstays of corporate visual communication of the 1970s, Eurostile and Univers, arranged tidily. The all-lowercase spelling is about the only trait that can regarded as non-standard. The revolution is in the means of production and distribution, not in the form.

John Carpenter teamed up with Kurt Russell and Debra Hill again to return to his old character, Snake Plissken from Escape From New York, apparently pushed by Russell who enjoyed playing Snake. Albertus is used in the opening and ending credit, although the type choice gets more ecletic elsewhere, using Skia and Eurostile essentially for the same purpose, to tell time.

As seen at jell-o biafra says.

I don't know what the odometer numbers are set in, any insight would be welcome!

Recently I had the urge to rewatch episodes of the 1970s show Family, a show I watched a lot as a kid. I rented the DVDs and got sucked in from the first few notes of the Bacharach-esque theme. The use of all-lowercase Eurostile perfectly fits to mood and era of the show.

Source: www.flickr.com Photo by Windell Oskay of Evil Mad Scientist. License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: www.flickr.com Photo by Windell Oskay of Evil Mad Scientist. License: All Rights Reserved.

Blip was a portable Pong-style game made in 1977, the year handheld video games were just catching on. Although it was branded “The Digital Game”, the action was purely mechanical, powered by a wind-up timer. According to the Handheld Games Museum, “The batteries are only there to light up the single red LED light that represents the ball. (You can actually play the game with no batteries in a bright enough setting).”

But that didn’t hold Tomy back from playing up the “digital” aspect. The late 1970s were all about video games, so the company did their best to hide Blip’s true analog nature, branding the product so it looked and felt high-tech and electronic. The name itself is an obvious reference to the sound a computer might make, and they pounded that into the heads of consumers in this television spot.

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

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

Besides the name, type played a major part in Tomy’s futuristic aims: what could be more computerized than Computer? The typeface was used for “The Digital Game” on the box, and the Blip logo was likely derived from Computer as well, but it needed some creative modification as the font had no lowercase. A cap ‘L’ works fine for the lowercase ‘l’, and a squashed cap ‘P’ can fake a minuscule if it descends below the baseline. Meanwhile, the logo on the unit itself appears to be set in Orbit-B, a design similar to Computer, but lighter and more square, with larger counters.

License: All Rights Reserved.

Japanese and German editions of Blip, courtesy sellers swow and Los Reyes Magos.

The Japanese version (left) was labeled “World Tennis”, set in Data 70, another simplified take on the MICR aesthetic. The same font was also used on the packaging for the German “Blip-o-mat” (right).

If you add it all up, this odd little game managed to utilize all three of the MICR-style fonts that were frequently found in futuristic films, entertainment, and other products throughout the 1970s and ’80s. Read more about the relationship between this type genre and video gaming in an extensive article by Zach Whalen.

Traduit de l’arabe par Kasimirski
Garnier Flammarion 237, 1970
Couverture: Premier verset du Coran, édition de 1894 en caractères neskhis. Paris, B.N. Cabinet des Manuscrits orientaux, ms. arabe 418, f 3 v

See more covers from French publisher Garnier-Flammarion.

The ‘1’ has been truncated from the conventional Eurostile Bold Extended to reduce the width of the double-digit hours. The wide original would work better for 1-o-clock, though.

Battery operated version of the same design.