Thomas Gilbert’s fan poster for 2001: A Space Odyssey is a highly stylized, refreshing take on one of the most revered science fiction movies of all time. The choice of Mostra Nuova, based on Italian Art Deco lettering of the 1930s, is an unexpectedly natural fit. The use of the movie's space station as a visual pun to represent the double-zero is genius. I can’t believe I've never seen it done before.

Gilbert makes the most of Mostra Nuova’s stylistic range, utilizing several alternate characters. Some characters have been modified—P, E, D, and particularly the S, with the inside curves made into sharp corners that give it an almost tech vibe.

Gilbert is an automotive designer working at Aston Martin and has been creating his Art Deco style fan movie posters for at least five years, often using Mostra Nuova and other Art Deco inspired typefaces. He doesn't seem to have a website, but his work can be seen on his Instagram account.

Auction catalog featuring paintings, furniture, and works of art: From the Seiz Breur to the Seiz Avel. This auction in Rennes will bring together works by the Seiz Breur artists and those by their modern-day successors, known collectively as the Seiz Avel.

Designed by Cyril Dessirier at Bluepoulp for Rennes Enchères Bretagne, with photos by Laurent Guizard. The cover features a painting by Lukian Denez and a wood sculpture by Joseph Savina – as well as Kornog for the title.

The identity for Poirier Coutansais establishes a dialogue between Art Deco and modern rationalism, between ornament and structure. Designed by eschenlauer sinic, it extends the philosophy of Victor Poirier Coutansais’s practice, where craft meets concept, and sensibility meets precision.

The wordmark follows an architectural approach to letter design. Loosely inspired by the decorative proportions of Gershwin, its construction recalls the spirit of Parisian Art Deco façades, where geometry became ornament. The rigid framework is balanced by more lyrical, almost calligraphic details reminiscent of hand-tooled metal or carved wood from the applied arts of that era.

This is countered by the use of Figure Monospace, whose mechanical logic introduces a contemporary tension – a dialogue between the analog and the digital, the handmade and the systematic.

Around the logotype, a custom visual vocabulary was developed: frames, borders, and star-shaped symbols act as rhythmic markers throughout the system. Echoing the geometric motifs and gilded fillets of the period, these elements bring a sense of controlled fantasy. Each motif serves a functional purpose, merging hierarchy and decoration in the spirit of modernist applied arts, where structure becomes ornament.

The identity finds its balance in a form of inhabited precision, where the rigor of the line becomes a vehicle for emotion.

Front cover. The Batman logo in Plaza is paired with Compacta. “The Batman Adventure” appears to be Mekanik, stretched.

The Batman Adventures was a comic book published by DC Comics from 1992 to 1995, as a tie-in to the cartoon Batman: The Animated Series. The first 16 issues were lettered by Tim Harkins, but starting from issue 17 (dated February 1994, but actually on sale in January), lettering duties were taken over by Richard Starkings of Comicraft.

Dialogue and sound effects are hand-lettered. Titles and credits are in the Lite and Dark weights of Dutch Courage, which were created by Comicraft for The Batman Adventures. Dutch Courage appears to have been inspired by Plaza, which was used for the logo of Batman: The Animated Series.

Page 1, showing Dutch Courage Dark (“Tangled Web”), Dutch Courage Lite (other titles and credits), and hand-lettered dialogue. Small print in Helvetica.

Page 7, showing titles in Dutch Courage Lite and hand-lettered dialogue.

Like Plywood, Aztec is a 1960s typeface by Photo-Lettering that was adopted from an Art Deco alphabet found in Publicité Vignettes Lettres Chiffres Monogrammes et Rehauts Modernes, a source book published in 1931 in Paris, France. The original piece of lettering is titled La Massive and was drawn by A. Bardi, the artist who also takes credit for the alphabet adopted as Halloween.

In 1971, Haig Adishian specified it for the cover of an album by vibraphonist Gary Burton and pianist Keith Jarrett, recorded a year earlier together with guitarist Sam Brown, bassist Steve Swallow and drummer Bill Goodwin. The photography is by D.H. Burton.

[More info on Discogs]

This composite detail shows several letterforms with triangular elements, including for crossbars in A and H, a typical element of Art Deco lettering. The wedge shapes are probably also what inspired Aztec’s name – despite the fact that the design originated in 1930s France, and has nothing to do with Mesoamerican art or architecture, apart from some coincidental and superficial formal parallels.

The hairline that’s part of Bardi’s original design was here rendered in white, causing it to disappear when viewed from a distance.

On the back, Aztec is printed in a single color. Additional text is set in two weights of Helvetica.

Wilson Pickett was a busy man in 1968: The Midnight Mover was his second album released that year, after I’m in Love. The cover design is by Marvin Israel, who had served as freelance art director for Atlantic Records from 1957 to 1963, and also worked with the label on several of their albums in later years.

Israel was a regular customer of Photo-Lettering, Inc., the leading typesetting studio in New York. For The Midnight Mover, he picked Plywood, a face for which Reybach just contributed the first Use – another album from 1968, Sam & Dave’s I Thank You.

The design of Plywood didn’t originate at Photo-Lettering, Inc., though. Like Halloween, Aztec, Cabaret, Razzle Dazzle, and Echo, it’s based on an alphabet sourced from a book published in 1931 in Paris, titled Publicité Vignettes Lettres Chiffres Monogrammes et Rehauts Modernes. With this design and alphabet sampler, “Guérinet publishers captured the fading glory of ‘Modèles de lettres’ from the Romantic period with their Art Déco-inspired collection”, writes Michel Wlassikoff.

The basis for Plywood is one of several “unpublished modern alphabets with numerals”. The open bold geometric sans with triple split shade is titled La Tiercée (“The Trifecta”) and credited to P. Picaud. The designers at PLINC didn’t do much more to it than add some punctuation glyphs (see the ampersand, for example) and give it a more prosaic name. Plywood was added to their catalog in or before 1965. I wouldn’t be surprised if was the inspiration to other faces with a similar effect that were issued by PLINC in the following years, see Montgomery Pousse Cafe, Push Pin Myopic, and Accelera.

[More info on Discogs]

The basis for Plywood: La Tiercée by P. Picaud as shown in Publicité Vignettes Lettres Chiffres Monogrammes et Rehauts Modernes, Les Editions Guérinet, Paris, 1931

Detail from the album cover. The W without notches at the bottom and the “lazy S” give away Plywood’s Art Deco roots. Note that the LS pair was spaced so that the “plies” form continuous lines. Unfortunately, the face was used with stretched letterforms, as one can see in the out-of-the-round O.

With works that exuded cool elegance and transgressive sensuality, Tamara de Lempicka (1894–1980) helped define Art Deco. Her paintings captured the glamour and vitality of postwar Paris and the cosmopolitan sheen of Hollywood celebrity. This exhibition at the de Young is the first major museum retrospective of Lempicka in the United States.

Lempicka’s work is characterized by bold lines, geometric, and angular shapes. Her figures possess a volumetric presence and monumental scale within the frame, often situated against the backdrop of a looming cityscape.

To create a backdrop for the graphic identity, we borrowed visual cues from the kind of narrow hypervertical linearity found in Art Deco architecture, vertical slat blinds, and corrugated glass. Vertical panels functioned as a backdrop and recurring visual motif within the marketing campaign and the exhibition space.

Because the vertical panel gradient referenced the Art Deco period, we wanted to contrast that by using a contemporary sans serif that brings this exhibition into the present day. For the title lock-up, JL Pirelli lent itself well to a tight stacked orientation which gives it a clean and concise expression.

Push Pin Art Deko in use for a 1975 best-of compilation by Sonny & Cher.

Paula Scher (b. 1948) used Milton Glaser’s sans-serif caps with solid letterforms. She overlayered the letters to counter their wideness, additionally creating a spatial effect through the shadows cast onto the subsequent glyphs. The disc-like crossbars in A E H get this treatment, too, turning them into floating objects. To further increase the compactness and to reduce clutter, Scher moved the two stems of H closer together and made the vertical in E thicker. The acute accent most likely is a custom addition. Finally, the lockup is enclosed in an Art Deco frame that echoes the pastel colors of the type.

[More info on Discogs]

Song names and credits on the back cover are set center-aligned in light Futura.

Cantina Mandia is a restaurant in the Colegiales neighborhood of Buenos Aires. To design the identity, Ufficio Studio used the typeface Molitor by Matthieu Cortat, Banana Grotesk by Mitch Paone, and Modern Prestige by Hendry Juanda.

On their website, we can read:

This branding was inspired by the frames of cinema in the 1960s era. The logo, based on a contemporary Art Deco typography, incorporates diagonal elements evoking the lively Italian spirit of Tarantella, with its vibrant voices, post-dinner conversations, and lively music. For the styling, we included photos of Sofia Loren related to food and leisure, and took the relaxed color palette from one of her images that combines an orange-golden hue to a great set of green tones. To introduce a feminine touch, we incorporated frames that remind us to the trimmings of folders and fabric napkins embroidered by grandmothers and added a script typography reminiscent of romantic movie titles. This blend of unique elements conveys the spirit of the era in a modern way.

Photos by Maria Eugenia Solla

Poster for an Art Deco exhibition shown at the Finch College Museum of Art in fall 1970. Finch College was a liberal arts college in Manhattan. It closed in 1976.

The poster measuring 24″×36″ was designed by Milton Glaser of Push Pin Studios. He used a typeface that may have been designed specifically for this occasion. At least that’s what its name suggest: it’s presented in PLINC’s 1971 catalog as Push Pin Art Deko. The showing doesn’t include individual credits, but it mentions Milton Glaser’s name in the sample text, suggesting that it was him who designed the typeface as well.

The wide open caps feature several traits that are characteristic for the Art Deco style: a geometric build with pointed apexes, an S with three horizontals (compare to the lettering in Cassandre’s Nord Express poster from 1927), and an A with a triangle as bar (see Pierre Zenobel’s A New Blue Train to the Cote d’Azur poster from 1928, as well as to period typefaces like Novel Gothic or Vulcain). PLINC’s one-line sample has other glyphs for A and E than the poster, suggesting that Push Pin Art Deko came with alternates.

Milton Glaser Inc. mentions that the poster “employed two split fountains on the press in order to create the effect of a full color announcement [in just two print runs]. Of course, this requires a sympathetic pressman and willingness to spend a lot of time adjusting the results.”

Hat tip to the Herb Lubalin Study Center.

Push Pin Art Deko as shown in Photo-Lettering’s One Line Manual of Styles, 1971

Detail with the filled-in and overlapping letterforms of Push Pin Art Deko

When the exhibition moved to Cranbrook Academy in January 1971, Glaser had the poster reprinted, now on pale yellow paper, which further increases its overall colorfulness, as he explains in his 1973 monograph.

A copy of the Cranbrook College version is currently on sale from renewfinds.

A beautiful invoice used in 1934 by Art et Décoration M. Delmas, a manufacturer and retailer of lighting, vases, and other decorative articles, located in Montauban, southern France.

The geometric sans is Futura, sold in France by Deberny & Peignot under the name Europe, here used in several weights. The wide grotesque is Ronsard, Warnery’s version of Industria. The small print at the left appears to be set in Cheltenham or similar – this design was available from Fonderie Olive in Marseille as Americaines Nouvelles.

The two styles used for the company name are lettered. For approximating the wide Art Deco caps with digital fonts, one could use Impetus Inline or Aliment.

Stepping into the Spoiled Parrot is like entering a candy-colored dream, where retro nostalgia meets gilded elegance. We named this confectionery and ice cream spot inside the Tin Building by Jean-Georges after a stanza from a Rumi poem which goes “I am a spoiled parrot who eats only candy. I have no interest in bitter food.”

We designed the identity and packaging to be independent of the Tin Building brand, while nesting comfortably under the same roof. Custom-stamped chocolate bars and luxurious details befit the elegance of the space, while multi-hued geometric shapes represent flavor profiles (and the feathers of a certain parrot who has escaped his golden cage to indulge his sweet tooth).

The feathers subtly mimic the archways of the space’s Deco interior, while IvyMode leans into this era in time, but in a contemporary light. We stretched it to 75% width and in our opinion, it works surprisingly well. Uomo Piccolo has a playful warmth yet utilitarian quality that anchors the typographic system and labeling convention as a whole.

Blue Park Kitchen is a healthy fast casual restaurant located in New York City. Inspired by New York City parks, historic monuments and subway mosaics, Blue Park's rebrand by Hungry Studio aims to bring the inviting nature of Prospect Park to the lunch table.

The typefaces for the menu artwork include modified Worthington Arcade, Arquitecta and Gin. On the menu, information is set in Franklin Gothic and Miller, using Clearface Gothic for headlines.

The Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer (1877–1962) is one of the world’s most widely read cookbooks. The first edition shown here was self-published in 1931: Rombauer had 3,000 copies produced by A.C. Clayton, a local print shop in St. Louis that hadn’t printed any books before.

The book was illustrated by the author’s daughter Marion (1903–1976), who served as the art director at John Burroughs School at the time. After her marriage in 1932, she was named Marion Rombauer Becker. For the dust jacket, she made a papercut depicting Saint Martha of Bethany, the patron saint of cooking, slaying the dragon-like Tarasque. The design helped to sell around 2,000 copies in the first year. After the Rombauers found a publisher in 1936, The Joy of Cooking has been in print continuously, and has sold more than 20 million copies to this day.

The chromatic letterforms in black, blue and green are custom made, closely following Bifur (Deberny & Peignot, 1929), with overall bolder lines and a wider K than in the typeface. Bifur was designed by Cassandre. The French artist was born in 1901 in Kharkiv (Ха́рків), nowadays the second-largest city in Ukraine, and currently one of the sites of the terrible war.

Hat tip to Alexander Tochilovsky of the Herb Lubalin Study Center, who was born in Odessa.

In 1998, Scribner published a facsimile of the original 1931 edition, with a foreword by Irma’s son, Edgar Rombauer. The added text is set in Champion Gothic.

Poster for Fiorello!, the Pulitzer-prize-winning musical, San Francisco, 2018

Various poster designs for musical shows produced and presented by 42nd Street Moon, a theatre company in San Francisco that is dedicated to celebrating and preserving the art and spirit of the American Musical Theatre.

The titles are based on my Swonderful (The Ampersand Forest, 2019), an Art Deco typeface in three weights, with four variations of every uppercase character, and two variations of every lowercase character. It is paired with Neutraface (House Industries, 2002), which is typically used in all caps from its Condensed styles.

Poster for Stephen Sondheim's Follies in Concert, 2018

Poster for Titanic: The Musical — in Concert, 2019. Key art is an homage to A.M. Cassandre's L’Atlantique poster, 1931.

The Negroni: A Love Affair with a Classic Cocktail book by Matt Hranek, designed by Headcase Design, uses two typefaces on the cover to capture the Art Deco air of the classic cocktail and its origins. Albertus Nova used to set the word Negroni, subtly channels the style of lettering used for Carpano and Campari labels. It smartly avoids having to mimic them directly, but still feels relevant. It’s also a nice choice for the distinct shapes of N, G, and R it affords. The secondary typeface on the cover is Mark Simonson’s Mostra Nuova. This is the typeface that faithfully carries the Italian Art Deco spirit, connecting to the history of Negroni. The interior pages are set in Adobe Caslon, which gives the book a range of classic textures, with the Bold and Italic styles used throughout. Caslon contrasts and complements Mostra and Albertus which both function in headlining capacity.

Le Boucanier was founded in 1969 by Arlette and Léon Chalaux, and it quickly became a go-to pub because of its theme nights and other great shows. Located on the Aspirant Herber wharf, next to the canal, this place experienced several lives, from being a club, a cabaret or piano bar to finally becoming a pub known for its good food.

In 2017, Nicolas Jean and François Domingues acquired this magnificent and history charged place. They redesigned the pub's menu, aiming to highlight local craft products, they created a new wine list, loaded with beautiful local references, and thus logically wanted to rework the visual identity of the place to restore its reputation and acclaim.

We developed a custom typeface for the restaurant’s identity. Braciola is an all-caps Art Deco typeface in the Italian tradition, drawn in three weights, with many alternates. It’s used for the logo and menu headers. The menu items are set in a mix of Univers, Univers Ultra Condensed and Caslon Graphique.

“Bistro in Séte since ’69”. The print uses two of Braciola’s three options for the letter S – the third one is a ligature of two stacked S’s.

In June 1905 Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and his fellow students Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel and Karl Schmitt-Rottluff founded the artist group Die Brücke (The Bridge). In the following years Kirchner advanced to one of the most important representatives of expressionism and he is regarded as a pioneer of Classical Modernism.

His work as an architect, on the other hand, is hardly known. Kirchner studied architecture for four years. Die Brücke was founded shortly after he graduated as an architect in July 1905. 95 original architectural drawings by Kirchner have survived until today. They bear witness to the various movements of the time and illustrate architecture in the way Kirchner understood it to be, namely a total work of art – completely in the spirit of contemporary architecture at the beginning of the 20th century.

On large fold-out pages the observer can lose themselves in the fine details of the drawings. The @typeentity:46199@ typeface of the title used is inspired by Art Nouveau posters common in Kirchner's era. With the wonderful OpenType features it brings liveliness and colour to the pages of the scientific texts, which are set in low-key Metric.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Vor der Kunst die Architektur is the catalog to the exhibition of the same title, shown at Baukunstarchiv NRW. The book is available from Verlag Kettler.

There was much more to Roman Cieślewicz (1930–1996) than his grounding in the Polish School of poster art. Born in Lwów (today Lviv, Ukraine), he studied at Kraków Academy of Fine arts between 1949 and 1955 before joining the Ty i Ja monthly in Warsaw, acting as its art director from 1959 to 1962. The following year, he moved to Paris, launching a new phase of his career which encompassed art directing periodicals (Vogue, Elle, Opus International), teaching at the École supérieure d’Arts graphiques (ESAG) and designing posters for movies (Yves Boisset’s L’Attentat, in 1972) and cultural clients.

In 1978, the recently-opened Centre Georges-Pompidou/Musée national d’Art moderne in Paris showed a groundbreaking exhibition about the artistic relationships between Paris and Berlin during the first decades of the twentieth century. Paris-Berlin 1900–1933 met with huge critical and popular acclaim, and Cieślewicz’s striking poster, uncharacteristically set in all-lowercase Helvetica, was acknowledged as an instant classic, highly coveted by art lovers and collectors alike. Seven months later, Cieślewicz also designed the poster for the Centre’s next blockbuster show, Paris-Moscou 1900–1930.

Object of Affection – a self titled EP debut from members of Southern California’s Fury (Run for Cover Records), Lock, Leather Slave, Aussie transplant Death Bells (Dais Records) and more. Out now as Chaotic No Good’s first ever original-music release. The Limited Edition cassettes feature two-color risograph printed j-cards printed by Martian Press.

The typeface used in the j-card design is Canopée. With its contrasting letterform widths, this typeface references Art Deco-style fonts like Plaza, Montecatini, and Mostra Nuova. In the 1980s there was a revival of 1920s influences in visual art that can be seen in cover art like The Passion’s “I’m in Love with a German Film Star”, New Order’s Movement, and Duran Duran’s Rio. The OOA sound is heavily influenced by this era of music so it is something I wanted to reference with the j-card design. Additionally, the contrast between the vertical and horizontal stokes of the letters gives this font a formal and sophisticated tone. The sharp serifs make it feel a bit dark and moody while still retaining a literal visual lightness due to the large counterforms of the O, C, G, and 0. The adjectives used to describe the font also lend themselves to the music with OOA’s brooding vocals and bright guitars.