UK pressing on Decca Records. Track names are listed in Univers Condensed.

From Wikipedia:

Through the Past, Darkly (Big Hits Vol. 2) is the third compilation album by the English rock band the Rolling Stones, released in September 1969 by Decca Records in the UK and London Records/ABKCO Records in the US. […]

The name of the album is a play on a line from the KJV translation of 1 Corinthians 13: “For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face…”

The font used for the band’s name and title is Windsor Elongated, with Akzidenz-Grotesk schmal fett for the text in parentheses. Cover design by John Kosh, with photography by Ethan Russell.

[More info on Discogs]

US pressing by London Records. Track names are listed in Alternate Gothic (or Trade Gothic Condensed).

A Torontonian project could hardly be any torontonier. First to mention here is the place it’s all about: Massey Hall. Founded 128 years ago as Massey Music Hall, the venue reflects on Canada’s industrial history, as it was initiated and largely financed by Hart Massey, heir to the famous farm equipment manufacturer. Built in an eclectic mix of Palladian façade (topped off by a nice Modern Style lettering) and Alhambra-inspired neo-moorish hall, the site quickly became a favorite meeting place for the citizens of Canada’s largest city with the events ranging from choir programs to political agitation in its early days. Later, up to 1982, Massey Hall served as the domicile of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (which did not exclude gigs by others).

From 2018 to 2020 the building underwent full-scale renovation works and amplification which fell in place well considering the restrictions for this kind of establishment during the Covid pandemic. The highly acclaimed works that led to a significant improvement of the acoustics and the restoration of architectonic detail true to the original were conducted by KPMB, an architect’s office located in – guess where? – Toronto.

Thirdly, and this is what this post is really about, a book was published in 2021, coinciding with the reopening of the hall: That Night at Massey Hall, initiated by David Binks. Binks assembled about 300 stories told by artists, staff on site, and audience members of shows held at Massey Hall, spanning almost 100 years in the history of music performance, the whole illustrated with lavish photographs. It is basically a book made by fans of the venue, for fans of the venue. It was published by A.B. Independent from, yes, Toronto.

The book was bound in Canada, printed in Canada and also designed in: Toronto, Canada. Responsible for the graphic design are Underline Studio who are, fourthly, just a 30 minutes bike ride away from Massey Hall. In their design they went much longer a path: either in two or three columns, the typography is set left-aligned which means a hell lot of work.

For the reading text, the website just as much as the book use Neue Montreal by Pangram Pangram, based in, gosh, Montréal, which hopefully will not spark civil war. The headlines reach even further, to mother Paris and Production Type’s Media Sans, designed by Jean-Baptiste Levée. Where messages ought to be loud, Media Sans is loud. Used as here, in a large variety of widths and in big to huge sizes, it’s the perfect pick to emulate billboards and venue lettering worthy of giants like Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, and Johnny Cash.

Source: www.flickr.com Uploaded to Flickr by Bart Solenthaler and tagged with “kabel”. License: All Rights Reserved.

Tattoo You is an album by the Rolling Stones, released in 1981 on the band’s own Rolling Stones Records. It opens with the hit “Start Me Up” (yes, that’s the song used by Microsoft in their Windows 95 marketing campaign). From iorr.org:

The cover art, like the cover of Goat’s Head Soup, featured Mick Jagger on the front and Keith Richards on the back. No images of Bill Wyman, Charlie Watts, or Ron Wood are found anywhere on the album. Jagger is covered in tribal tattoos and set against a bold red background with the band name and album title above. The labyrinth of tattoos was illustrated by Christian Piper [using photographs by Hubert Kretzschmar as the basis]. […] A great many people did not recognize the face as Jagger’s and more than a few wondered who the ‘woman’ on the cover was. […] Asked why only two Stones appeared on the album Kretzschmar said, “It was a decision that Mick and Keith must have made. I remember Charlie was at the photo shoot with both of them, no effort was made to get him to pose or be part of it.

According to Kretzschmar,

Peter Corriston’s claim that he originated the concept, is […] not true. Peter had a typesetter who set a few title type variations, which was the extent of his alleged design.

License: All Rights Reserved.

Detail.

The variation that was finally chosen uses an open and shaded setting of Kabel, easily recognizable by its high-waisted A and the asymmetrical Y. One such ready-made variant is shown in the 1976 Lettergraphics catalog as Kabel Neon. The song titles are printed in all-caps Helvetica, red on green.

[More info on Discogs]

Florian Hardwig. License: CC BY-NC-SA.

Glyph set of Kabel Neon as shown in a catalog by Typeshop, a European chain of typesetting studios that carried typefaces by Lettergraphics.

In memoriam Charlie Watts (1941–2021) who, before he became the drummer of the Rolling Stones, had worked as graphic designer at the London-based advertising company Charlie Daniels Studios.

Source: www.flickr.com Uploaded to Flickr by Bart Solenthaler. License: All Rights Reserved.

A typeface for the smart set

Terry McDonell, the now legendary magazine editor, was starting his own magazine, Smart, in 1989. When he said he wanted to evoke The Smart Set, the stylish, literary monthly edited by H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan in the Roaring Twenties, I thought of Lucian Bernhard’s Bauer typeface from 1929, Lucian. That resulted in another early Font Bureau digitzation of a vintage foundry type, Belucian. At that point David Berlow was thinking of a adding a “Be-” to the names of all his revivals (cf. Belizio), but we talked him out of that later.