Initially released as Hitman 3 (2021) and rebranded in 2023, Hitman: World of Assassination is a stealth game and the eighth entry in the namesake’s franchise. You play as a contract killer named Agent 47. Hired by the ICA, you are tasked with assassinating multiple targets across the globe.

A guilty pleasure of mine, this game includes one of my favourite user interfaces of any game. It is highly minimal yet professionally done with a purpose, as a professional like Agent 47 needs only the most necessary information conveyed clearly to execute his job.

Much of the user interface is set in Neue Haas Grotesk, a perfect font that I can see 47 liking. This extends to all of Hitman’s visual branding since the 2016 reboot, where it first introduced this style of UI. Noto Sans makes a peculiar appearance, used on numbered elements and as the primary font for when non-Latin languages are selected.

Official logo

Main menu

Preparing for a mission

Every briefing cutscene ends with a list of the targets and a “Mission Active” card

Most cutscenes often end with the name of the targets and a “Mission Active” card, signaling 47 to start

Agent 47 in his natural habitat

Completing a mission. Noto Sans is used for Mission Time.

Even in the credits IO Interactive gives it some distinct flair. Noto Sans is used here as well.

Settings screen

Player profile. Noto Sans is used on the experience points.

From Wikipedia:

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is a 2024 first-person shooter video game co-developed by Treyarch and Raven Software and published by Activision. It is the twenty-first installment of the Call of Duty series […] Black Ops 6’s single-player story follows rogue CIA operatives Troy Marshall and Frank Woods as they assemble a team of agents to hunt down Pantheon, a paramilitary group with covert ties to the agency.

Black Ops 6 continues the age-old tradition in military shooters: it must use squared sans-serifs no matter what. And this game more than kept its end of the bargain. Kairos Sans Condensed is featured throughout the game’s UI, mainly on big headings and small, less important text. TT Lakes Neue and its Condensed variant are mainly used on long body text, where Kairos Sans could be a bit too angular for readability.

Subtitles are set in Monospace 821 Bold, evoking the feeling of reading a transcript – very fitting for the “off the books” nature of the Black Ops games. Helvetica itself is also used, but is reserved for numbered elements. The venerable Noto Sans returns, used on the scoreboard and player names for full language converage. Stratum 2 makes a surprise appearance, but only in the campaign’s pre-rendered cutscenes.

Game logo

Main menu

Mission select screen on the campaign mode

A cutscene that happens early in the game. Stratum 2 is seen here.

Multiplayer lobby

Modfiying a weapon. Monospace 821 is used on gun statistics.

Every now and then, the game gives you multiple dialogue choices. The last line of dialogue is set in the regular width of TT Lakes Neue, while the buttons use the Condensed width.

Admiring a beautiful shotgun. The campaign uses a different HUD from the online modes. Button prompts (bottom right) appear to be set in Noto Sans, while the rest is in Kairos Sans.

The start of a Team Deathmatch mode. Helvetica can be spotted on the bottom right, used for the ammo counter. The monospaced version – Bitstream’s Monospace 821 – also appears here in subtitle form.

Scoreboard

Tasting sweet victory in the form of a very large Kairos Sans

Barely surviving in Zombies mode. The HUD appears virtually the same as other online modes. Note that Helvetica is used on the score numbers, while Noto Sans on the described kills.

The BND, short for Bundesnachrichtendienst, is the foreign intelligence agency of Germany, directly subordinate to the Chancellor’s Office. Since 2019, the BND headquarters is located in central Berlin. The BND’s current recruitment campaign uses Cy by supertype.

It’s the first application of the BND’s new identity including a new logo featuring a stylized eagle and a BND wordmark in Linotype’s DIN Next, which is also used for accompanying text. For security reasons, the name of the responsible agency will not be made public.

“We’re looking for terrorists (m/f/d). Find them with us.”

“Imagine that YOU are wanted by the BND. As part of the team.”

“No shaking, no stirring. Simply applying.”

“Get behind it.”

Haus in der Nähe eines großen Waldes (“House near a deep forest”) by Markus Draper was released by Spector Books:

A house is the starting point of a modern fairy tale. Located in Dresden, the house has an intriguing history. It was home to an outpost of the Soviet KGB for a time - opposite the Dresden Stasi headquarters. Also the young secret service officer Vladimir Putin went in and out here from 1985 to 1990.

The house is part of the installation as a realistic model, surrounded by trees and animals. The narrator is a fly sitting in front of an open window. Her voice sounds cheekily childlike. She talks about the house, about Dresden, about the comprehensive surveillance of the KGB and the Stasi, about Putin's rise in the hierarchy of the Soviet Union, about the fall of the GDR and the end of socialism, about political affairs and intrigues.

The narrative is embedded in a stream of media images from news reports, documentaries and films. A “true” story in which historical facts, memories and visions are blended together. Not a history lesson, but a fairytale-like, artistic reconstruction full of conjecture, ambiguities and gaps, which takes in many perspectives - as if observed through the compound eyes of a fly. At the same time, it is a story about storytelling and the construction of history.

The book was designed by Christian Lange, who paired KTF Rublena and Kommuna throughout.

US one sheet poster by an unknown designer for the 1997 spy comedy film Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. The film is directed by Jay Roach and stars Mike Myers in a dual role as the titular Austin Powers and his arch-enemy Dr. Evil. It is the first film in the Austin Powers series.

The film's title and tagline are set in Anzeigen Grotesk — potentially using the digital version from Linotype. The distorted psychedelic text occupying the rest of the poster is based on a type which was originally known as Scorpio or Hoopla, but is also known under various other aliases in digital form, such as BellBottom, Groovy, Balloon or Doobie.

In 1973, the International Typeface Corporation presented ITC Tiffany in the inaugural issue of their promotional U&lc magazine and advertised it as early as March that year. According to the info stated in a later issue (vol. 8 no. 2 from June 1981), ITC offered the typeface in 1974, which is also the date given by most contemporary sources.

Irrespective of one’s definition what exactly constitutes a release, this dust jacket is an early use of ITC Tiffany. The book by Donald McCormick (written as Richard Deacon) was published by Taplinger in 1974.

Ed Benguiat designed Tiffany as “a merge of two typefaces, Caxton and Ronaldson”, both of which originated in the 1880s. This ancestry is visible in the long angled serifs and the R’s leg that pierces through the counter. What these 19th-century typefaces didn’t have is a wide range of weights. The uncredited jacket designer contrasted Tiffany’s two extreme weights, Heavy and Light, both used in all caps. With a typeface so strong and full of flavor, they needed nothing else.

Today, Ed Benguiat would have turned 95 – happy birthday!

From the inner flap:

In this book, which will particularly interest readers of John Barron’s KGB, Richard Deacon successfully attempts the almost impossible, for the Chinese Secret Service is so secret there are some who do not believe it exists. It seldom surfaces and there are very few defectors and very few captured agents. Accordingly, the author established his own private intelligence network, called Operation Jackdaw. Using reports from his many ‘spies’, much thoro research, and interviews with defectors and many other Chinese, Mr. Deacon has pieced together an absorbing picture of the tremendous ramifications of the Chinese Intelligence – little of which has ever appeared in print before.

Side note: it’s disturbing to show this book (which looks a lot like a Cold War product) and at the same time to read about China being accused of operating secret “police stations” in Europe.

The credits and first line of the series title are set in Microchip, with a stencilled version of Helvetica Medium Condensed used for the second line.

Title sequence for the 1988 American television series Mission: Impossible, designed by Betty Green. Though originally envisaged as a remake, the revival is a continuation of the 1966–1973 television series of the same name.

The credits and first line of the series title are set in Microchip, a computer style typeface seen in Andresen Typographics: One Line Showings catalog from 1985. It would seem that the M in the series title has been slightly modified with an added enclosed square, possibly to evoke the MICR-style of Moore Computer or Magnetic Ink, as when used in other places it does not appear this way. A stencilled version of Helvetica Medium Condensed is used for the second line of the series title.

Other title cards are set in Compacta Black, sometimes paired with ITC American Typewriter which is also used for the end titles.

Other title cards are set it Compacta Black, sometimes paired with ITC American Typewriter.

The end titles are set in ITC American Typewriter. The IMF logo, occasionally seen in these end titles and throughout the series, is also based on Microchip.

Penguin Books, 1975. Cover photography by Denis Rolfe “shows a typewriter and case planted on the author, presumably by the CIA.” The title typeface is ITC Machine Bold.

From the back cover:

The CIA is the most powerful secret police force in the world. Its hand has been seen in many incidents, sometimes with reason, sometimes more dubiously: the Bay of Pigs, the Greek coup, the death of Che Guevara, the fall of Allende and countless other incidents have been seen as evidence of the CIA’s work.
Agee worked for the CIA for 12 years, in 3 different countries. He began by accepting the ‘Company’s’ views and aims, but as time went by he came to see it as a bureaucracy designed not to help those in whose country it works, but simply as an arm of American interests.
[In writing this diary] he describes the structure of the CIA, how it recruits, reveals a large number of international organizations founded by the CIA, names many agents and describes, with deadly accuracy, exactly what this vast, sleazy organization does. The picture that emerges is not glamourous, but it is convincing.

The title card features all-caps Roberta with a perspective drop shadow.

Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp is an early 1970s comedy series featuring a cast of chimpanzee spies. It was produced by Sandler-Burns-Marmer and first aired on ABC on September 12, 1970. From Fabulous Sebastian’s review for DVD Purgatory:

Children’s television in the sixties and early seventies was bizarre. Really bizarre. I don’t know if drugs were involved, but reflecting on shows like Batman, The Magic Roundabout, Banana Splits, HR Pufnstuff, and even Sesame Street, makes me think they were. And in large quantities. Perhaps the oddest of them all was Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp, which was produced from 1970 to 1972. Mike Marmer and Stan Burns, probably inspired by the success of Get Smart (where they were writers), Planet of the Apes, and Mr Ed, had the idea to create a spy series using talking chimpanzees. The cost of creating costumes and sets in perfect scale for the apes made it the most expensive Saturday morning children’s show of its time. And it looks fantastic for the effort.

The show centred around Link and his love interest, the glamorous Mata Hairi, who were spies for APE (Agency to Prevent Evil). APE were in a continual war with CHUMP (Criminal Headquarters for Underworld Master Plan), headed by Baron von Butcher (voiced by Bernie Kopell who played Siegfried in Get Smart). Each show also included Lance and friends performing as The Evolution Revolution, who were the coolest band of the time (much cooler than Josie and the Pussycats or The Monkees).

The Agency to Prevent Evil (A.P.E.) wordmark uses City Bold with faux small caps, set on a curve and framed by bananas.

Roberta appears again for the secondary title card.

The squarish sans-serif caps with rounded corners used for the logo of C.H.U.M.P. (Criminal Headquarters for Underworld Master Plan) appear to be custom lettering.

Among the accompanying merchandise was a metal lunch box produced by Thermos (1971). Here, the “Lance Link” wordmark uses Bauhaus Geometric Shaded (Photo-Lettering, 1970). This precursor to ITC Bauhaus (1975) was drawn by Ed Benguiat, who also helped to develop the title graphic for Planet of the Apes in 1968. [House Industries] “Secret Chimp” is set in Broadway Condensed. Link is shown together with Mata Hairi and his boss, Commander Darwin.

The reverse side of the lunch box shows Baron von Butcher, the Duchess, and another CHUMP villain.

Lancelot Link also had a band, The Evolution Revolution, which released one self-titled album (Dunhill/ABC Records, 1970) of psychedelic bubblegum pop music, with a cover design by Douglas Carr. [More info on Discogs] The typeface chosen for the band is Marschall (also known as Domingo), used in all caps.

Gatefold of Lancelot Link And The Evolution Revolution. Photography by Mike Marmer and Allan Sandler.

Title card from a music video. In the show, the band was introduced by Ed Simian, a riff on Ed Sullivan.

The Central Intelligence Agency has long failed to recruit younger and more diverse candidates. Maybe it's their history of orchestrating deadly military coups, or their litany of human rights violations, or perhaps, as Vice points out, it's that many of the diverse candidates they're trying to attract can trace their heritage to places that the agency has undermined and destabilized.

Regardless of reason, it's their image as a stuffy Ivy-league boys club that motivated the CIA's trendy rebrand. In a direct appeal to younger candidates, the updated website is more reminiscent of a Millennial direct-to-consumer popup brand than a staid government agency, and prominently displays their careers page and updated jobs portal. The main website showcases a suite of fonts from Swiss foundry Grilli Type. It features GT America for titles, headers, and body copy, exclusively using the extended and expanded widths. Other headers and pull-quotes are set in GT Sectra, while some UI elements use GT America Mono.

GT America Mono in use for captions.