Cover and spine of the hardback edition with gold foil stamping, 29.7×25.6 cm

For me, Monoline Script will always be linked to its prominent use for the comprehensive Martin Parr monograph:

This encyclopaedia of Martin Parr covers his long career as an image maker and has an insightful text written by longstanding friend and colleague, Val Williams. The book was produced to accompany his retrospective exhibition at the Barbican in London, which then toured over ten more venues. A detailed analysis of Parr’s development and career shows how he became a passionate collector of ephemera. Published by Phaidon Press Limited, London, 2002. Text by Val Williams. Designed by UNA (London) Designers.

With the spine lettering featuring the artist’s name in big pink script letters against a purple background, the book stands out from every shelf. I treated myself with a copy after attending a presentation held by Parr at a photography conference in Berlin in the early 2000s. I immediately fell in love with his keen eye for fellow human beings and their quirks.

Martin Parr sadly died on 6 December 2025 at his home in Bristol, England. In his obituary for the Guardian, Charles Darwent described him as a “photographer whose unblinking eye documented the human subject as a birdwatcher might, via plumage, habitat and diet.”

Works by Parr and such that are related to him and his foundation came up on Fonts In Use before. His Boring Postcards even inspired a set of Uses with generic tourism postcards from the mid-20th century.

Cover of the softback edition (2003) with silver (?) foil stamping. The text typeface is another creation by the English Monotype Corporation: Plantin. The heavy wedge-tailed rightwards arrow (➽) looks like it’s taken from ITC Zapf Dingbats, cf. the 1978 promotional booklet.

The same typeface combination was used for a free gallery guide with postcards published on the occasion of Parr’s retrospective exhibition Photographic Works 1971–2000 at London’s Barbican Gallery in 2002.

The cover for the second edition from 2014 adopts the colors of the gallery guide (see above) and foregoes the foil stamping.

With the 25th issue titled “All Inclusive”, the magazine Akademische Mitteilungen (“Academic notices”) celebrates its anniversary. For this occasion the designers of the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart (Academy of the Arts Stuttgart) decided to work with Bridge by Mona Franz, available from Typemates.

Bridge Head is classically responsible for large and characteristic headlines, while Bridge Text does what it can do best – working reliably in reading text. The two sans serifs are Adieu (Good Type Foundry) and Beatrice (Sharp Type).

Among the contributors to “AM25” is photographer Martin Parr, who, with his British humor, shows some ludicrous and absurd beach snapshots. Photographer Norman Conrad takes us to the artificial holiday world Tropical Islands. Christoph Niemann illustrates a fictious image of an “all expense tour” in a polemic dispute which is written by philosopher Prof. Daniel Martin Feige. The anniversary issue is designed by Alina Wenzler and Dominik Schnabelrauch, class of editorial design by Prof. Hans-Georg Pospischil (Communication design, ABK Stuttgart).

For the exhibition, catalog and collateral for Martin Parr: Souvenir at Miguel Urrutia Art Museum (MAMU, Bogotá), Tangrama used Maax Raw Stencil (designed by Damien Gautier and distributed by 205TF) and Fugue (designed by Radim Peško).

From Tangrama’s website:

For the development of the graphic identity of the exhibition, we worked with the Maax Raw typeface in its stencil version, to refer to concepts such as the transport of goods and souvenirs.

For the entry of the exhibition, we developed a montage that simulates a commercial shelf of stencil letters and images from Martin Parr’s photographs. The background wall is covered with a wallpaper that recalls the domestic interiors captured by the early work of this English photographer.

For the exhibition room, Tangrama proposed a color palette based on each of the series included in the exhibition and extended sheets with a laser cut lettering for the holders. Between each series, a blank strip was left on the wall to accentuate the soft color changes.

Martin Parr has a self confessed ‘gene of collecting.’ Porcelain space dogs, a 12,000+ photobook collection, dictatorship paraphernalia or iconic images depicting ’80s seaside resorts, Parr has always been a magpie. Collection became the starting point for the new identity for the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol.

Whilst the foundation houses Martin Parr’s expansive own 45 years of work, it also holds a growing collection of works by selected British and Irish photographers across a library, archive, gallery and shop. It was important the identity could be flexible and allow for a more stripped back presence.

The Foundation is set within the cultural hub of Paintworks in Bristol, and needed a signage scheme that reflected the identity. Layered and folded powder coated steel brings the collection into a 3D space.