A 1977 promotional poster for the Space Mountain, set entirely in Karolys Italique

1977 promotional poster for the Space Mountain attraction in the Tomorrowland area at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, which first opened on May 27, 1977, following the success of the 1975 ride of the same name at Walt Disney World, Florida.

The promotional poster features just three words "Space Mountain" in all caps, and its location, "Disneyland," with both set in Karolys Italique.

The Space Mountain logo featuring Karolys appears to have been created for the 1977 opening at Disneyland, as it is not featured on earlier promotional materials for the 1975 ride at Walt Disney World, Florida.

The promotional flyer features more Karolys, this time both the Romain and Italique, with the all caps "Disneyland" distorted to match the arc of a rocket-fueled roller coaster. The event date and time are set in either Neue Aurora or Inserat-Grotesk. Text under the Space Mountain logo is set in ITC Avant Garde Gothic. Text surrounding the ticket price is set in Helvetica Condensed and the remaining text is set in Helvetica.

The Space Mountain logo, used from around 1977 until 1994, set in Karolys Italique

A 1977 promotional flyer for the Retail Clerks Family Party at Disneyland, featuring Space Mountain, the most incredible attraction in 22 years!

A 1977 Disneyland Space Mountain bumper sticker, set in Karolys Italique

A very 1990s design for the German edition of “Disney’s Chess Guide” by Anatoly Karpov, featuring Carol Twombly’s Lithos (Adobe, 1989) with gradient fill and drop shadow. The cover art is by Italian cartoonist Marco Mazzarello (b. 1971).

The opening titles to Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983) use a serif typeface of unclear origin. It appears to be a version of Marquis. Or maybe a different interpretation of the same unidentified historical source, which could be a metal typeface or a lettering model from the late 19th century.

Marquis is shown in the 1968 catalog of Photoscript, a London-based typesetting studio. As one of only a few faces, it’s marked with a copyright symbol, possibly indicating an original design, or an exclusive phototype adaptation. It reappears in the supplement to Phil’s Photo catalog (2nd edition, 1985), now spelled Manquis. In 2012, Claude Pelletier made a digitization named ManquisCP, which is probably based on the showing by Phil’s.

The titling face in the animation featurette is different from Manquis in several details. A is wider and has a cyma, i.e. a sort of wavy, detached swash that helps to texture the whitespace to the left of the letter. The bottom serif in S and the top serifs in M are double-sided, the middle serifs in W don’t meet, the height of the R leg is less suppressed, G doesn’t have a bar to the left, etc. The downward bulge in the bars of A and H can be found both in Manquis and the version used here. This detail references (neo-)Romanesque lettering.

Rave Club is a series of rave parties at the Ágora Club in Valencia, Spain. The design is inspired by the musical culture of Acid House, Techno and Hardcore. Also the resource of the use of neons, glitches and digital fonts of the 1990s. The “RAVE” logo refers to 1970s acid (perforated pieces of paper that were soaked in LSD), creating lettershapes by tearing off stamps.

Photo: tabmok99. License: All Rights Reserved.

Photo: tabmok99. License: All Rights Reserved.

The Disney platform game Mickey's Ultimate Challenge was released for multiple platforms in 1994. The screenshots depict the Super Nintendo port. The copyright symbol was either custom or borrowed from another font, as the Comix font (see Cartoon 12) did not include this character. Interestingly, the word “OPTIONS” is shown in an enlarged version of the font. Presumably, this lettering was custom designed for this game, as no other enlarged version of the font is known to exist.

Photo: tabmok99. License: All Rights Reserved.

Photo: tabmok99. License: All Rights Reserved.

Photo: tabmok99. License: All Rights Reserved.

Photo: tabmok99. License: All Rights Reserved.

Fantasia was released as an exclusive title on Sega Genesis/Megadrive. It uses the Comix font (see Cartoon 12) liberally. The logo used on the game’s title screen represents an early use of Black Chancery.

Photo: tabmok99. License: All Rights Reserved.

Photo: tabmok99. License: All Rights Reserved.

From Intercity:

A limited edition book by celebrity photographer Rankin, Mickey Mouse & Me celebrates 90 years of the original Disney icon with portraits of famous faces including Kate Moss, Heidi Klum, Tinie Tempah and Mark Hamill. While paying tribute to the cultural impact of Mickey Mouse and the inspiration he has given, the book has also been published in support of Together for Short Lives, and features three families of children with life-limiting conditions. Proceeds from all 300 collector-edition copies of the book will go directly to the charity.

Intercity used Plaak (designed by Damien Gautier and distributed by 205TF) and Neuzeit Office (designed by Akira Kobayashi for Linotype).

Student project for the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts in Saint Louis, USA.

A book editorial investigating Walt Disney’s Opening Speech for Disneyland on July 17th, 1955. The book contains the Disneyland Opening speech interspersed between two supplementary articles to provide greater depth into the Disneyland’s opening day.

I wanted to use supplementary text to reinforce my theme investigating Walt Disney’s idealizing speech. With this in mind I selected “Disneyland got off to a nightmare start in 1955, but ‘Walt’s Folly’ quickly won over fans” by Brady MacDonald and “How Disney Came to Define What Constitutes the American Experience” by Bethanee Bemis. The two articles intend to mark the enormous political and influential power Disneyland has over the American image. I used two separate typographic treatments to present Disney as it’s stereotypical magic filled image, yet contrast that said into a more serious editorial.

I included Disney drawings sourced from “The Illusion of Life” by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas to serve as the beautiful imaginative part Disney prides itself upon and highlight the drawings during spreads featuring the speech.

Poster series designed by Caterina Bianchini for Axe on Wax, a London based record label with artists like Chaos in the CBD, Boo Williams and Marlon Hoffstadt. The posters use a variety of fonts, including several freebies or system fonts, with Pretorian being a recurring theme.

The open-source Eczar paired with Pretorian, all in distorted caps

The blue type appears to be Flames, a free digitization of Mecanorma’s Dreamline.

Lydia is a digitization of the Bold Condensed weights of Lydian.

The big type appears to be outlined Grease, a highlight version of Cooper Black.

The Erika-Fuchs-Haus | Museum für Comic und Sprachkunst is the first museum ever to focus on the achievements of a translator, namely Erika Fuchs (1906–2005), who is best known for ingeniously bringing the adventures of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck to the German language. The museum transforms the two-dimensional medium of comics into a three-dimensional exhibition and thus allows to experience them in a new way. In addition to media expositions about the life and work of the translator and the history of comics, there are numerous interactive objects which help to comprehend Erika Fuchs’s accomplishments through playful experiments with language. With blown-up details from the comics, room-filling lettering and symbols, as well as a specially developed wayfinding system, the exhibition graphics and architecture guide the visitors into a unique cosmos of comic culture.