Kiwanuka is the third studio album from English musician Michael Kiwanuka. It’s available in several formats (vinyl LP, CD, cassette tape), all with album art prominently featuring Motter Ombra.

Design by Richard Andrews, featuring a painting by Markeidric Walker.

[More info on Discogs]

The designer of this East German film program, Barbara Tucholke, had more luck laying her hands on proper Motter Ombra than Gisela Kossatz. The 4-page pamphlet was published by Progress Film-Verleih, Berlin, for the screening of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972) in the GDR, 1974.

Motter Ombra paired with lowercase ITC Avant Garde Gothic on the cover of a statistics textbook published in 1976 by Wadsworth.

I love how Ombra is twisting and turning over the gridded dancefloor!

Artwork for the self-titled debut album by Concept Neuf. Sleeve concept and photography by Richard Provençal, cover painting by France Malo.

This record by the Montreal band is mostly samba and jazz-funk covers of artists such as Chuck Magione and Ralph McDonald. The type used on the front is Premier Shaded, the notes are in Helvetica, and on the insert notes Aki Lines can be also found.

The fonts work well in fitting in with the albums sonic qualities, especially looking back from the current day. It's easy to tell that this record is from the 1970s just by looking at the use of Premier Shaded on the front cover. An unremarkable choice for the time; fitting for an album of average samba covers. A lot of albums from this time fit a similar concept - popular songs but make it (insert genre) - and use similar typefaces. I think that Premier Shaded works well with the kitschy and surrealist oil pastel illustration of an endless marimba in the desert on the front.

Tech-house DJ Ninetoes sampled their cover of “The Path” for his track “Finder”, which has since gone on to become both an Ibiza staple and soccer ultras anthem in the North Curve section of Celtic Park, Glasgow. This is where I first encountered this record personally, and I think it's quite funny to think about how an unremarkable samba cover of a Ralph McDonald song can go on to become a stadium anthem albeit 40 years down the line!

France Malo, the cover's artist, is still making work.

Front and back cover design

Cover for “So Gone” by Tanukichan, released on the record label Sonic Cathedral as part of their 7-inch single subscription club. The typeface in use is Zoo by Blaze Type.

Front cover features a distorted version, with a repeat pattern from the Extended and Condensed weights on the inside of the sleeve. The sans serif used on the back and the labels is Gothic 725 Black (Bitstream’s version of Akzidenz-Grotesk), and the photo of the artist is by Jacob Romero.

Inside cover repeat pattern

Inside cover repeat pattern design

Centre label design

A-side “Handsome Johnny” was originally released in 1966 by Richie Havens. This single was reissued in 1970 after Woodstock's success. This cover is was for the French re-release.

The artist’s name is probably a hand-lettered variation of Seymour Chwast’s Art Tone Black Bottom (like Boot Black, but with closed apertures at the bottom). Titles are set in Folio eng (see Folio Condensed), which was available from Mecanorma as Folio-Caravelle Bold Extra Condensed. The condensed sans used for “comme à woodstock” (which roughly translates to “as played at Woodstock”) is unidentified. The information on the back is set in three styles from Egizio.

Mind of My Mind is the second book in the Patternist series by African-American science fiction author Octavia Estelle Butler (1947–2006). First published in 1977 by Doubleday, this is the paperback edition by Avon Books from 1978, with a cover illustration by Clyde Caldwell. The title is set in caps from the Half-Solid style from Face Photosetting’s Pluto. The smaller type is ITC Avant Garde Gothic.

[More info on ISFDB]

Milton Glaser’s poster for an Easter Sunday concert by American gospel singer Mahalia Jackson (1911–1972) was printed in two versions — one facing right and the other facing left — so that the two could be shown side-by-side to create a rainbow.

A group of five white trucks is parked in the monumental Výstaviště Praha Holešovice – Central Hall of the Industrial Palace in Prague. Usually this is the kind of vehicle that transports works of art to an exhibition. Here, as a part of the Prague Quadrennial, the trucks themselves are the exhibition space.

Inside, loading space is repurposed as display cabinet and cinema; on the outside, designers Matěj Činčera and Jan Kloss left no possibility unused to brand the vehicles with vibrant red typography. From the installation art itself and the type on the roof to number plates and the obligatory Wondertree air freshener: the high contrast Zoo (designed by Quentin Coulombier and available from Blaze Type) is used throughout. Its offbeat shapes are counterbalanced by straightforward typography with programme information, using Akzidenz-Grotesk.

The Performance Space Exhibition showcases a wide range of possibilities for theatre architecture. From found and transformed spaces to major national projects to temporal outdoor structures, especially those in remote or complicated areas where the creators of the space might not be architects.

Contemporary performances take place in many spaces outside of traditional theatres, and these can be just as exciting and valid as those in traditional multifunctional performing arts structures made exclusively by architectural firms. The buildings and spaces that come alive for a performance are complex organisms fusing together ancient traditions with new important views.

No matter how beautiful or complex a piece of stunning architecture might be, without a connection to the community and the dialogue between the creator and artists using the space, the result might be a lifeless shell of a building.

Client: Prague Quadrennial
Concept & design: Matěj Činčera, Jan Kloss
Extended technical support & photography: Marek Volf

Milton Glaser’s album cover for Einstein On The Beach by Philip Glass & Robert Wilson features a custom typeface designed by Glaser named Einstein. An image of a bolder version of the typeface that is yet to be digitized is shown on Daylight Fonts and is reproduced at the end of this post.

Inner sleeve (or booklet?)

Box set (front)

Box set (back)

A bold version of Einstein of unknown origin, as shown on the website of Daylight Fonts.

Poster for the Atari Touch Me arcade game, a memory game similar to Simon. The display type is Lucia Shadow, made by Dutch designer Jan de Borst and issued by Mecanorma as a contest winner around 1972. The shaded lowercase letterforms are paired with ITC Souvenir for text.

Czechoslovak poster for the Polish movie Dziewczyna i chłopak (1980). Directed by Stanisław Loth, the cinema version of the adventures of Tomek and Tosia is based on a popular TV series of the same name. Known as Kluk Nebo Holka? (“Boy or Girl?”) in Czech, the English title is The Girl and the Boy.

The poster was designed by Eva Heřmanská in 1984. The title typeface is Wiegands Roundhead, a film typeface designed by Jürgen Wiegand and issued by Berthold Fototypes in 1974, with a number of alternates. Roundhead offers a weird mix of rounded and square stroke endings as well as descending and non-descending glyphs, which doesn’t always yield convincing results. Heřmanská exclusively used the capitals. The question mark is probably custom. Wiegand also made a version without rounded terminals, named Wiegands Adbold.

Portuguese version of “All I Know”, a song written by Jimmy Webb and first recorded by Art Garfunkel on his 1973 debut solo album, Angel Clare.

It’s yet another sleeve credited to Gráficos Reunidos in Porto, who used quite a bit of Lucky in 1973–1974. Who wants to count how many rubdown sheets they must have used for this output? Here the typeface by André Pless appears in red capitals. The titles are in lowercase letters from a light Futura. The words are loosely spaced to match the width of the artist’s name.

Mildred B. Davis is an American novelist whose books generally fall into the suspense/mystery genre. Katherine (Davis) Roome, her daughter, and a published author herself, helped Mildred break a 30-year publishing silence by working with her to turn some previously unpublished manuscripts into the Murder in Maine series. The third book of this series, however, was written by Mildred quite recently. —  Wikipedia

Tell Them What’s-Her-Name Called was published in 1975 by Random House, New York. The jacket typography combines Simplex, a monolinear uncial originally designed by S.H. de Roos for the Amsterdam Type Foundry in 1939, and ITC Avant Garde Gothic (1970), here with its alternate e and noticeable ink traps.

A poster designed for a workshop by Collected Works at the School of Visual Arts / MFA Design program, using Zoo by Blaze Type. The (small) sans serif type is Mier B by General Type, part of the corporate identity of the SVA MFA Design, recently designed by OCD.

Detail.

Detail.

Detail.

Detail.

Gigantoid is the 11th album by the southern California stoner rock band Fu Manchu. It was released on April 29, 2014 on At The Dojo Records. [Wikipedia]

Layout and logo by Peder Bergstrand, collage by Kieron Cropper. Motter Ombra here appears with contour and some modifications: M got a top right corner, A is an enlarged a, and the H is an entirely custom creation. For the album title and the track listing, ITC Avant Garde Gothic is used with its hallmark alternates and discretionary uppercase ligatures.

I've found this cover while crate digging this week-end. Mecanorma & Letraset ‘line typefaces’ festival happening right here!

The smaller bits use caps from Horatio, while the track listing and the credits on the back cover are in ITC Avant Garde Gothic.

Publication for the Women’s Educational Resource Center in Chicago, edited by Carol Adams Henry; designed and illustrated by 2017 AIGA Medalist Emmett McBain while he temporarily gave up work in advertising, and engaged with the arts and nonprofit communities in Chicago.

The small type appears to be set on an IBM Selectric typewriter using the Prestige font. Bitstream’s Prestige 12 Pitch is the closest digital approximation.

Release date unknown. The recording is from Malibu Beach, Fall 1961. Designer Sam Suliman used Brodovitch Albro on at least a couple record sleeves. Perhaps it was the allusion to music notes that appealed to him.

A Microsoft ad in the program for a typography conference, combining fonts from their past logos (see 1975 and 2012). Things used to be so funky.