The cover to Volume 1

The Witches’ Marriage is a yuri manga by Studio Headline. Initially published from 2021 to 2023, the series was localized by Yen Press from 2023 to 2024.

For witches, love is power, and to open the Door of Truth— the ultimate goal for any spellcaster—Melissa needs to forge the strongest bonds she can. By now, she’s perfected her routine: marry a naive witch, use her to gain power, and discard her afterward. Melissa’s next target is Tanya, a young girl who’s fascinated by magic and longs to follow in her new mentor’s footsteps. But Tanya has a charm unlike Melissa’s other brides, and her pure, innocent cuteness just might be enough to melt the ice-cold witch’s heart…

The title seems to use Dancing Script, with alterations made in red and white highlights added to replicate the style of the Japanese logo. Stars replace the tittles in the i’s. The author name uses Bodoni Bold. The header and numbers on the Contents page are set in Bernhard Modern, while the chapter titles use Aclonica. The letterer for the manga is Bianca Pistillo.

The Japanese volume 1 cover. The English title is set in Cochin Bold.

Harry Lighton’s debut film, Pillion, makes confident use of Tactic Sans, the sharp-shouldered typeface designed by Richard Miller for Miller Type Foundry. Both the teaser posters and the trailer titles are set in Tactic Sans Extra Extended Ultra, stretched across portraits of Harry Melling and Alexander Skarsgård.

Hyperion Avenue, an imprint of Disney Publishing Worldwide, has reimagined the fairytales we all know and love into an adult series of contemporary, escapist rom-coms with a twist. The book covers resemble movie posters, with large type taking center stage and a small storytelling vignette hinting at which of our beloved princesses is getting a modern-day retelling. Citrus Gothic from Adam Ladd Design, with its hand-drawn, textured look, blends nicely with the illustration style to complete the main composition. Core Circus, a geometric sans serif from S-Core, carries the tagline and author credit, while Adobe Caslon rounds out the typographic hierarchy in the endorsement blurbs nicely.

Design by Marci Senders with illustration by Stephanie Singleton.

The Disobedient Daughter, June 1982

Before Barbara Hazard (1931–2019) started to write poetry (at sixty) and to quilt (at seventy), she already explored several other creative fields. In 1953, she graduated from Rhode Island School of Design and worked as a graphic designer for an advertising firm in Concord, New Hampshire. Hazard also trained as a musician and studied oil painting with Amy Jones. According to Open Library’s bio –

she began to write historical fiction in 1978. First published in 1981, she went on to write and publish 48 books, several of which are also in circulation abroad. She won several awards for her writing.

Shown here are the covers of fourteen romance novels published in the Signet Regency Romance series between 1982 and 1988. The title typeface on all of them is Reid Bookman. This Bookman variety was drawn by William Reid in a single Italic Swash style and issued by Photo-Lettering in 1967. Between the fourteen covers, we get to see a good chunk of Reid Bookman’s character set – including the q and the Q.

It’s not clear who was responsible for the typography. With her background in graphic design, Hazard might have had a say in it herself. In any case, the art is not by her: thirteen of the covers were illustrated by Allan Kass. Only one title, The Rake’s Protégée, has art by Walter Popp.

Hat tip to Javi Gonzales for the pointer.

A Surfeit of Suitors, March 1983

The Calico Countess, May 1984

The Singular Miss Carrington, August 1984

Enchanting Stranger, October 1984

The Emerald Duchess, January 1985

Mad Masquerade, April 1985

The Dreadful Duke, November 1985

The Rake’s Protégée, 1985

The Turnabout Twins, May 1986

The Cloisonné Locket, November 1986

The Royal Snuff Box, March 1987

Lady Lochinvar, November 1987

The Queen Bee, August 1988

L’amour ouf, known in English as Beating Hearts, is a romantic drama film directed by Gilles Lellouche from a screenplay he co-wrote with Audrey Diwan, Ahmed Hamidi and Julien Lambroschini, based on the 1997 Irish novel Jackie Loves Johnser OK? by Neville Thompson. The Franco-Belgian coproduction starring François Civil and Adèle Exarchopoulos premiered at the Festival de Cannes:

1980s. Northern France.
Jackie and Clotaire grow up in the same town, at the same high school, around the same harbour docks. She studies, he bunks off. Then their paths cross and they fall madly in love. Life tries its best to keep them apart, but they are like two halves of the same beating heart…

The main typeface used for the film’s promotion is ITC Serif Gothic. The logo is set in two lines of its Black weight. ITC Serif Gothic also appears in other weights, in the teaser and trailer videos, on posters, and for the soundtrack album. The posters were designed by Le Cercle Noir for Silenzio Communication, with photography by Cedric Bertrand.

Pre-release poster from 2023, featuring ITC Avant Garde Gothic as second typeface. The title here isn’t yet shown in a stacked and justified arrangement.

Theatrical release poster

Teaser poster

English-language version

The soundtrack with original music by Jon Brion was released by Label Panthéon. [More info on Discogs]

Design by Gravillis

Luca Guadagnino’s romantic sports drama Challengers makes extensive use of Rockwell for its 1980s-style movie poster and further promotional material.

Design by BLT Communications. The IMAX logo uses Microgramma Bold Extended.

Poster with the track list of the Challengers soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross

Ashley Script was issued by British Monotype in 1955 as series 574. The informal bold italic is based on the handwriting of Ashley Havinden (1903–1973), a Scottish-born commercial artist who worked at the W.S. Crawford ad agency in London for forty-five years, from 1922 to 1967. Compare the typeface as shown in a Monotype specimen to Havinden’s actual handwriting: characteristic details like the stemless d and the bolt-like s are present in both. At least in that 1956 sample, the letterforms are connected.

When cover artist John L. Baker (or an unnamed colleague) worked on Marjorie Warby’s The Hibiscus Hedge, he didn’t make direct use of the typeface, but rather drew the letterforms manually, as one can see from the irregularities between repeating characters. I love it when things come full circle: a typeface based on handwriting, rendered by hand. The author’s name shows one of the strengths of Ashley Script: it also performs well when set in all caps.

The book was issued in 1961 by Fontana Books, then an imprint of Scottish publisher Collins. The Fontana Books logo is based on Bodoni Bold Italic, and thus also a case of lettering derived from typeface.

Detail from a page from Specimen Book of ‘Monotype’ Printing Types Volume One, displaying samples of Ashley Script (series number: 574) in various font size from 14pt up to 42pt. Produced and distributed by The Monotype Corporation Limited, Salford, Redhill, UK.

The Centre for Printing History and Culture (CPHC) is currently conducting a survey on the future of the Type Archive in London – where this specimen is preserved – which shut down and is now under the Science Museum Group. Consider taking part if you can spare five minutes.

British writer Mary Mussi, née Edgar (1907–1991) authored more than fifty romance novels under the pen name Mary Howard. Her Family Orchestra from 1945 contains “three thrilling love stories”. The shown Canadian paperback edition was published by Collins as White Circle Books 254 in 1946, with cover art by Margaret Paull (1920–2008).

The unconnected brush script with the unconventional stress is Frank H. Riley’s Grayda, first cast by ATF in 1939. Howard’s name is in black Futura caps. The last two and a half letters had to be traced in outline to make them stand out from the dark bakground.

Shàngó Gothic Medium as used on the book jacket of A Fate Inked in Blood. The first volume of Danielle L. Jensen’s Saga of the Unfated was published by Del Rey.

From the author’s page:

A shield maiden blessed by the gods battles to unite a nation under a power-hungry king—while also fighting her growing desire for his fiery son—in this Norse-inspired fantasy romance from the bestselling author of The Bridge Kingdom series.

Cover design by Ella Laytham, using an illustration by Eleonor Piteira. The secondary typeface is Agency Gothic CT, which has an alternate flat-top A in the lowercase.

From Wikipedia:

You’ve Got Mail is a 1998 American romantic comedy film directed by Nora Ephron and starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. Inspired by the 1937 Hungarian play Parfumerie by Miklós László (which had earlier been adapted in 1940 as The Shop Around the Corner and in 1949 as In the Good Old Summertime), the screenplay was co-written by Nora and Delia Ephron. It tells the story of two people in an online romance who are unaware they are also business rivals. It marked the third pairing of Hanks and Ryan, who previously appeared together in Joe Versus the Volcano (1990) and Sleepless in Seattle (1993), the latter directed by Ephron. The film takes its name from the greeting AOL users receive when they get a new email.

The tagline and logo are set in the Light weight of Berliner Grotesk, with the actor names in the Medium. In the logo, the designer appears to have altered the t in the word “Got”, and the i dot in “Mail” was replaced with a pointer. The casting credits are set using Bee Two, with the URL www.youvegotmail.com in stretched Bee Four.

Maria träumt is the German release of the French film Maria rêve (Maria into Life), a romantic comedy about a shy custodian who starts a new job at an art school and learns to be free in creative and passionate expression. On the poster, the lively brush script Cortado is set at a dynamic angle over the lead actress in motion against a painterly background. The lead actors names’ are set in Condor.

Two freshly graduated female students hold their diplomas up in the air while looking at the viewer, with one exposing a naked leg. For those who consider the combination of the image with the subtitle “A Report Card on the Love Generation” too vague, a row of clip-art-like images has been added below the film title, detailing what the viewer will be seeing: some romance and no shortage of fast and motorized machines.

On the IMDb website, the film is summarized as “one for forgiving fans of 70’s counter-culture flicks” by user Red Barracuda:

For me, some films get by almost exclusively on their early 70’s era vibes. The Young Graduates is such a movie. [...] It’s not particularly strong in the story department but for what it’s worth it revolves around a teenage girl who starts an affair with one of her teachers; later on, her and her friend set off on a road trip where they encounter various stock and trade characters of the day.

The typefaces are trendy choices. Harry (1966) was released a few years before by VGC for setting headlines on their Photo Typositor machines. Bradley was published as a typeface by ATF in 1895. In the 1960s and 1970s it lived a second life along numerous other “novelty” typefaces of the late 1800s, after they were made available for phototype and/or rub-down lettering.

[More info on IMDb]

Luca Guadagnino’s 2022 film Bones and All uses Archivio Tipografico’s version of Aldo Novarese’s Nova Augustea as a supporting type. The logo is based on Trajan, with some added weight, reducing its stroke contrast. The credits on the poster appear to be set in Antonio.

Titles and graphics for the film were done by Peter Saville and Paul Hetherington.
Poster design artwork credit: Paolo Restifo

This is a follow-up on my previous contribution about Diabolus by David St. John, posted with the permission of Ron Lightburn. Ron enquired about the typeface used for another Fawcett publication with front cover artwork by Jeff Jones. I have identified the main text in yellow as Staudel Xenotype J, with the ancillary text in white being set in Edel Grotesk/Aurora Grotesk VI-VII, identified via a previous contribution of mine, the cover artwork for Salena Jones and Mieko Hirota at the Zlatniyat Orfey of 1973.

According to Fantastic Fiction, Claudette Nicole’s The Haunting of Drumroe dates from the same year. However, I am taking the cue from Ron and Sandra Lightburn’s Flickr post, where the year of publication is stated as 1971. If there are Fonts In Use readers who know which year is the correct one I would like to hear from them.

[More info on ISFDB]

A “reckless passionate romance” by Australian author Maysie Coucher Greig (1901–1971), published in 1947 as White Circle Books 312. Launched in the UK as subsidiary of Collins in 1936, White Circle started publishing mass-market paperbacks for the Canadian market around 1942.

The decorated italic caps are from Fournier-le-jeune. According to Mac McGrew, this face is “a reproduction of Le Fournier Le Jeune originally cut in France in 1768 […] and revived in 1913 [by G. Deberny]. ATF secured the American rights in 1926.” Cover photo uncredited.