Cannon is Lee Lai’s follow up to the Lamda Award winning graphic novel Stone Fruit. The title and author’s name on both the cover and the spine are typeset in Velzyland. On the cover, the wavy letterforms of Velzyland pair nicely with the rhythmic bird feather motif. And the angled baseline on the cover works especially well with Velzyland’s extreme slant of 25 degrees. On the spine, “CANNON” is stacked vertically alternating from red to black, further echoing Velzyland’s wavy rhythmic effect, and it’s sandwiched between the author’s name and the publisher name, D+Q, shorthand for Drawn & Quarterly. All of the type appears to be hand-rendered, as evidenced by the organic edge details which are not in the typeface, though the spacing is consistent with the typeface.

The poster for the tour with Tom Gauld and Mimi Pond uses Noto Sans.

Illustrator and artist Gwendal Le Bec pairs his rich, expressive drawings with the sharp, architectural character of BST Spyre by British Standard Type in Le Prolongement, published by Casterman. One of Europe’s most iconic comic publishers – think Tintin – Casterman continues its legacy of visually distinctive books with this striking combination. Spyre contrasts Le Bec’s playful, hand-drawn world, giving the project both structure and charm.

This graphic novel by French artists Fabien Grolleau and Jérémie Royer is a biography of Charles Darwin, focusing on his five-year voyage on board the HMS Beagle.

The German edition was translated by Anja Kootz and published by Knesebeck. The book uses FF Oneleigh on its cover.

Front cover

Semi Science-Fiction is comic book by French artist Léa Murawiec, published by Flûtiste Éditions in 2023.

Nirvana is in use for the book's title and author name. The Bold weight of Aesthet Nova serves for subtitles and other book names in the credit's page and inner sleeve. Format 1452 is the text typeface.

Back cover

Credits page

Close-up of the front cover’s title, showing Nirvana with hyper-extended glyphs and other modifications

Close-up of the back cover’s text, showing Format 1492

Close-up of the inner flap, showing Nirvana, Format 1492 and Aesthet Nova.

Source: www.instagram.com Anne Morgenstern. License: All Rights Reserved.

Fall 2023 preview

Founded in 1981, Edition Moderne is the oldest independent comic publisher in the German-speaking world and the only one in German-speaking Switzerland. In 2019, graphic designers Julia Marti and Claudio Barandun took over the baton, and introduced a new visual identity.

The logotype is set in Proto Grotesk. This “beast” (André Mora) by Production Type also serves as one of the two typefaces in the wider identity. It’s used for the website, the biannual previews in newspaper format (photos by Anne Morgenstern), and other materials. There it takes turns with Livory AS. The first serif designed by Aurèle Sack of LL Brown fame, it was released in 2023 with Lineto as LL Ivory.

For the design of Proto Grotesk, Jean-Baptiste Levée found inspiration in faces like Breite halbfette Grotesque. Shown by the Bauer & Co foundry in Germany in 1883, this raw sans has roots in early American Gothics. Sack, in turn, cites “19th century wood type and poster fonts of American origin” as the main influences for Ivory. No wonder the two typefaces go along so well. Both Ivory and Proto Grotesk exhibit a strong contrast and some eccentric details. They’re not stuck in nostalgia, though, and make for a mix that suits the contemporary, funny, and at times cheeky program of Edition Moderne quite well.

As of 2024, the publishing house is managed by Julia Marti and Marie-France Lombardo and maintains its focus on comics, graphic novels, and humor.

Source: www.editionmoderne.ch Edition Moderne. License: All Rights Reserved.

Homepage of editionmoderne.ch

Source: www.editionmoderne.ch Edition Moderne. License: All Rights Reserved.

Product page

Source: www.instagram.com Anne Morgenstern. License: All Rights Reserved.

Spring 2024 preview

Source: www.instagram.com Anne Morgenstern. License: All Rights Reserved.

Fall 2022 preview

Source: www.instagram.com Anne Morgenstern. License: All Rights Reserved.

Spring 2021 preview

Source: www.instagram.com Edition Moderne. License: All Rights Reserved.

Edition Moderne at Erlangen International Comic Salon, June 2023

Source: www.editionmoderne.ch License: All Rights Reserved.

Job posting

Source: www.instagram.com ETH-Bibliothek Bildarchiv. License: All Rights Reserved.

Social media posting celebrating the recognition as Publisher of the Year ’21

Source: www.instagram.com Edition Moderne. License: All Rights Reserved.

In 2019, the City of Zürich honored co-founder David Basler for special cultural achievements.

Photo: Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

How do you go about designing a book about a 3,000 kilometer bike journey across Europe? What should such a book look like? How should it feel? And how would the form reflect the content?

There are of course many ways to achieve such a goal, but this was a ride we did ourselves so we had ample time to think about the aforementioned questions.

What follows is an explanation and examples of how we chose to tackle the problem.

First of all we started by envisioning a book as clunky and impractical as a bike ride spanning four countries and thirty days. What we landed on was a pocket book too big for any pocket we’ve ever known. This seemed only natural – an arduous journey requires a format of the same kind.

The book should also look battered and bruised, much like the two cyclists who did the journey in the first place. A book you would throw into a bag without remorse and read it whenever you had some time off.

(Fun story: At a comic book convention we attended a lady came to buy the book from us and exclaimed in surprise: ”Oh! It is supposed to look like this? I thought the library copy I read had just been terribly mistreated!”)

The contents of the book consist of a graphic novel drawn by Kaisa, divided into eighteen chapters, all of them beginning with a reflection over our human traverse on this earth.

The book speaks of two journeys, the external one, i.e. cycling from one country to the next, but to an equal degree of the internal journey of an adventurer. It deals with the meditative aspects of road cycling. (Trust us, this will be important later on.)

Photo: Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Now that we have the background information sorted, we can dive into the topic you came to read about: typography!

As the most astute of you have already figured out, the headline is set in Banco by Roger Excoffon. For us it was the obvious choice, as it is French, and because it has a distinct ’50s feel to it. The style we we’re going for with the book’s visuals was a nostalgic one, hinting back to a time when traveling still felt like traveling.

Photo: Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

For the secondary type we knew we wanted a sans serif, preferably a geometric one. But this time our old friend Futura felt out of place. Too cold, too logical. There was little logic to our venture anyway. So something else, something a bit quirkier, an underdog of sorts.

Perusing our collection of type specimens and books on typography, we found the perfect contender: WAD’s Metro No. 2!

In a book Dwiggins wrote in 1928, he complained about the lack of good gothic capitals. Harry L. Gage at Mergenthaler read the piece and promptly commissioned Dwiggins to create a sans serif of his own. Thus Metro was born, and while it might not have outshone Futura, it was still the perfect fit for us – a bit idiosyncratic and not super popular, just like the two of us!

To make the type a bit softer with a slightly less crisp feel to it we aged all text through a both intricate and secret process. (Just in case you’re thinking that this looks nothing like the Metro you knew.)

Photo: Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Photo: Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

You will also see that we made two different covers. Or at least an additional dust jacket of sorts.

This was due to Kaisa being convinced that no one in their right mind would buy a comic book that had a photo on the cover.

So we reached a compromise – on half of the print run there would be a dust jacket with some promotional text to go along with the cartoon representation of Christoffer cycling.

We’ll leave it to you to debate which one works better!

The important thing here is that here we encounter yet another typeface – this time we used Morris Fuller Benton’s Empire, which adds to the classy feel of the project. For us it is all about class! Empire felt like the perfect companion to Banco and Metro, even when such a pairing might not be text book.

And speaking of books, what adventure book would be worth its salt, should it not include a map?

That is why we too were compelled to add a map depicting our adventure through Europe in the back of the book. As true to the modernist ethos we stuck with the same tried and tested typefaces as in the book itself – Mostly Metro with just a smidge of Banco thrown in for good measure.

And that’s it, the story of one of our more beloved books to date. But fear not, we will return to this very topic in a second post, as there is more to this project than a simple book.

In the meantime if you desire to learn more about our projects you can turn to our website.

Photo: Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Photo: Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Copy Shop cover

In the graphic novel Copy Shop, Julie works full time in a Berlin copy store, and she likes doing it. Her boss is unusually nice, and the pay is surprisingly okay. Ro also works here. He is a student and needs the part-time job. He can’t believe that Julie likes the store: in addition to boredom, there are fine particles in every corner. But Ro realizes that it’s not easy for him to talk to Julie.

Copy Shop is available from Felder Books Berlin. See a flip-through video on Instagram.

Copy Shop inside

Copy Shop inside

Copy Shop inside

Copy Shop cover

The Golden Age, a political epos is the title of an exhibition that took place at the Maison de la Culture in Amiens, France, in 2021. It was dedicated to the original artwork of Âge d’Or, a French graphic novel by Cyril Pedrosa and Roxanne Moreil.

The work appeared in two volumes in 2018 and 2020, respectively. On the top level, it is a fairy tale of a princess in the middle ages, largely inspired by medieval society, literature, and visual art. On a secondary level, however, it is a parable of our Western societies of the early 21st century, addressing topics such as class society, the relation between sexes, and the question how well-established societal orders can come to a change. The graphic novel was a big success in France and won several prizes.

The exhibition in Amiens was mounted in the framework of the 25th Festival de la bande dessinée. It was designed by Julien Lelièvre whose scenography allowed for an immersive delve into the artwork of the books. Spectators could learn about the genesis of the novel and find thematic points of access to the topics addressed.

From the typographic realm, Julien Lelièvre chose Media Sans, a family by Production Type first launched in 2015 and still being extended. The big typographic panels show Media Sans Extended Black in the headlines, together with the yet to be released text version of that typeface. Distinctive features that can be very well observed in this application are the extreme x-height of the lowercase letters and their almost non-existing ascenders and decenders. Eye catching!

Avaler la Terre (“Swallow the Earth”) is a manga by Osamu Tezuka. It was translated to the French by Jacques Lalloz and Patrick Honnoré and published by Éditions FLBLB. It depicts the story of a scorned woman who makes her seven daughters promise to deliver the society of men to chaos, starting with issues with money and morals.

The whole book is set in Emilie Rigaud’s Pachinko (A is for fonts), a rounded font deeply rooted in Japanese culture, from which it derives its first inspiration and final name. The title uses Jérémy Landes’ Le Murmure (Velvetyne).

Front cover of Smile (paperback edition)

Smile is Raina Telgemeier’s #1 New York Times bestselling, Eisner Award-winning graphic memoir based on her childhood. Initially published as a weekly webcomic on Girlamatic, it was published in book form in February 2010 by Graphix, an imprint of Scholastic Inc.

The light, informal sans used in Phil Falco’s cover design is a font drawn in 1998 by Ken Barber called Typography of Coop Light. The follow-ups Sisters (2014) and Guts (2019) follow this basic design.

Back cover of Smile (paperback edition)

Jacket of Smile (hardback edition)

Front cover of Sisters (paperback edition)

Jacket of Sisters (hardback edition)

Front cover of Guts (paperback edition)

From Jap Sam Books:

What defines a City? Is it its buildings, public spaces or people? No Seat At The Table is a fictional graphic novel about the local and global influences of gentrification on citizens in Turkish and Dutch cities. The book highlights four neighbourhoods where this phenomenon is occurring: Piyalepaşa in Istanbul, Ismetpasa in Ankara, De Kolenkitbuurt in Amsterdam, and Lombok in Utrecht. Each story is told from the perspective of pigeons and inspired by real life experiences of residential displacement in Turkey and the Netherlands. The stories critically investigate gentrification, the housing crisis and the current interpretations of setting priorities and affordability in urban planning. By doing so, it aims to facilitate the conversation on inclusive and sustainable cities for all.

Asperity is used for cover and headline type, with FF Super Grotesk for text. See more (non-type) images over at Jap Sam Books.

Banco on the cover of a book published by Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1972. From The Book Shed’s description:

Peasant militia defeats Japanese fascist forces in a graphic novel style account. The action is occasionally interrupted by a quotation from Chairman Mao. Illustrations by the Chekiang Fine Arts Institute Drawing Group.

The typeface used for the captions is some sort of Garamond.

From Counterprint:

Inspired by her viral BuzzFeed piece ‘37 Difficult Questions from My Mixed-Raced Son’, Mira Jacob responds to: her six-year-old, Zakir, who asks if the new president hates brown boys like him; uncomfortable relationship advice from her parents, who came to the United States from India one month into their arranged marriage; and increasingly fraught exchanges with her Trump-supporting in-laws. Jacob also investigates her own past, including how it felt to be a brown-skinned New Yorker on 9/11. As earnest and moving as they are laugh-out-loud funny, these are the stories that have shaped one life, but will resonate with many others.

In her cover design, Rachel Ake uses the open letterforms of Thorowgood Sans Shaded as pictorial windows into the memoirs: Filled with a color gradient and black-and-white illustrations of the protagonists, they evoke the shaded block letters found on mid-century postcards with greetings from cities in the United States. The specific font in use appears to be HiH’s revival from 2009.

While “A Memoir in Conversations” is handwriting, the quote by Celeste Ng is set in Peter Bruhn’s Corpus Gothic. The graphic novel itself (not shown) was designed by Pete Friedrich of Pageturner. The book was published by One World in 2018.

UK edition (Bloomsbury, 2019), with the same cover design

Adapted from the Historical Memoirs of Chinese historian Sima Qian (145–86 BCE), Des assassins relates the chivalrous prowess of five ancient Chinese warriors who committed – or attempted to commit – a political assassination.

For the book title on the cover, designers deux point deux chose Min Sans Regular and Bold, designed by Tienmin Lao and available from Future Fonts. This high-contrast sans serif has sharp and clean cuts, as if cut by a sword. The texts inside are set in Bely by Roxane Gataud (TypeTogether) and text in speech bubbles uses Inkslinger BB, designed by Nate Piekos and released through his Blambot type foundry.

The Taiwanese author, Chen Uen, uses a traditional Chinese brush painting technique. We decided to erase some of the borders of the frames, to let the Chen Uen’s art breathe and blow up. The book is published within its original sense of lecture: from back to front from a western perspective.

Des assassins is the first graphic novel – “manhua” in Taiwanese – in the collection Des cases, des langues, des mondes (“cases, languages, worlds) by independent publishing house Patayo.

From KLTF:

An early version of Grotext, still with rounded corners, featured on the cover of Christoph Heuer’s comic adaptation of Der erste Frühling [The First Spring], an award-winning children’s book written by Klaus Kordon. Published in April 2007 by Carlsen Verlag.

Each word is placed on a different angle, apparently to hint at the chaos and disruption of the war and its aftermath. The graphic novel tells the story of 12-year-old Änne, who lives through the final days of the Second World War. When the Red Army approaches Berlin, her grandparents cut off the girl’s braids and pass her off as a boy. Bit by bit, she learns the truth about the fate of her parents, who were imprisoned by the Nazis. One day, a strange man appears at the door. It is Änne’s father, who survived the hell of the Buchenwald concentration camp.

Kordon’s novel was first published in 1993 as the final volume of his Trilogie der Wendepunkte. Scenario by Gerlinde Althoff. Illustration by Christoph Heuer. Production by Gunta Lauck.

Polyspring by PintassilgoPrints is used on the cover and official trailer of DC Comics graphic novel Thorns, featuring the character Poison Ivy. From the DC Comics website:

New York Times bestselling author of The DUFF Kody Keplinger and artist Sara Kipin reimagine an iconic DC antihero with a gothic-horror twist.

Polyspring was hand-drawn based on ltalia Condensed from the Keystone Foundry (before 1901) and a quite decorative feature was added to it: the font is loaded with OpenType flourishing swashes – when turned on, initial and terminal letters of each word automatically get adorned. Besides the swashes, there are also adorned alternates for each letter and numeral.

The secondary typeface is Chesterfield.

In 2015, Moscow-based publisher Zangavar issued a new edition of Sergio Toppi’s comic-strip version of the Thousand and One Nights titled Sharaz’de, originally serialized in Alter Alter in 1979. The Russian translation titled Шараз-де was designed by Ilya Zherikov, using Amalta by Vera Evstafieva for titles and headings.

The editorial team of type.today spoke to Zherikov “about how it feels working on translated comic strips, his love for Amalta, and how, when put in the right place, a typeface turns into an oriental one.”

Why Amalta? Nothing to do with the fact that I fell in love with her as soon as I saw it. Why did it fit so well? I did a little research and realised that in Cyrillic world anything even slightly Arabic-related is either set in the unfortunate typeface Arabskij, which is a literal stilization of Arabic ligature script, or typed using a dense calligraphic typeface. Such as Frutiger’s Ondine, for example. It is equipped with a highly amateur Cyrillic set, quick and dirty as if it was sketched on a napkin. It is often used to set all these Arabian Nights, Aladdins, Bazaars, even though the typeface is originally based on Gothic scripts. Actually, one of English-language editions also used this very same Ondine. Apparently, we’re not the only one to apply it on such books. […] So, next to them I saw Amalta which also had a certain oriental vibe — not just those distinctive terminal strokes, something else. I won’t be able to explain any better. On the one hand, in terms of some of its plastic solutions Amalta is very similar to early Kufic scripts; on the other, it looks very much like late Gothic ones — for example, quite a lot is inherited from Rotunda. A magic of the tool, flat brush. That’s amazing.

Read the whole article on type.today.

The Raiders graphic novel is described by publisher Dark Horse as follows:

From Daniel Freedman (Undying Love) and Cristian “Crom” Ortiz (Golden Campaign), comes an original graphic novel about family, freedom, and killing monsters for loot.

Marken and Maron, inseparable brothers, are dungeon raiders in a land ruled by corrupt royals and filled with fantastic dangers around every turn. But just as Marken decides that it's time to give up the raiding life, both brothers find themselves at the wrong end of the powers that be and stumble upon a secret that may unravel the entire political system.

Tupã Bold, by Diego Maldonado (Just in Type) is used all caps for the logo created by Diana Ortiz (with a little cut at the first R). The text uses Liquorstore, by Chank Diesel (Chank), also in all caps.

Cristian “Crom” Ortiz is credited as artist and colorist of the graphic novel including the cover.

In 2019, French publisher Kana released two new manga books by Japanese author Inio Asano: Errance (零落 aka Reiraku) and Solanin integrale (ソラニン). These books feature minimalistic covers with information on top, each typeset with a different typeface but in a similar fashion.

Errance is set with the monospaced Knif while Solanin is set in Frauen Roman.These typefaces are also used on promotional banderoles that cover the bottom half of the actual cover. The Japanese typeface has been identified by Akira Yoshino: it's Hiragino Kaku Gothic, a Mac OS system font.

Cover without wraparound band.

Cover without wraparound band.

Le Méga Grand Bordeaux – votre ville en 2050 is a new graphic novel published by Editions Deux Degrés. It tells the story of Gilles, local civil servant, who will have the burden of turning Bordeaux and its surroundings in a paradise for the greatest number. But his path will be full of pitfalls. Will Gilles manage to obtain the validation of a superior administrative note? Will Gilles find the ideal place to live? Will Gilles meet the love?

This book also tells several ways of living around a city, and describes life choices which are more or less wise…

I notably draw my inspiration from the work of Joseph Le Callenec, who was graphic designer and publicist for the game “Mille Bornes”. My idea was that it should call to mind the concept of journeys and adventures.

To boost the book and the story, as well as depicting the grandiosity of such big urbanism project, I used condensed caps from Knockout and amplified its volume by adding a custom three-dimensional drop shadow effect. For the adventures, I worked in particular with Roger Excoffon’s Antique Olive which was used in the game “Mille Bornes”.

Illustrations by Gabriel Bord and Mathieu Zimmer, who also provided a custom typeface named Vaguement. See more images on Behance.