Ten episodes from Haida mythology, told by Bill Reid (1920–1998) and Robert Bringhurst (b. 1946), are accompanied by drawings by Reid.

The result brings Haida art and mythology alive as never before in an English-speaking world.

First published in 1984 with different typography, this is the 1996 edition by University of Washington Press:

This new edition of a collaboration between one of the finest living artists in North America and one of Canada’s finest poets includes a new introduction by the distinguished anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss.

The text face is Dante, designed by Giovanni Mardersteig. Titles are in Comenius by Hermann Zapf.

The Culture & Community Power Fund is a funding initiative that supports projects helping indigenous peoples of America and other communities impacted by systemic oppression. The typography in the fund’s identity, created by design studio Outside, is catered by Berton Hasebe’s Druk Condensed and Fragment Sans by Pangram Pangram. The ampersand is taken from Noto Serif Italic.

Main poster

Pacella Vega, a bold, heavy serif designed by Vincent Pacella, was the main title font for Sydney Pollack’s 1972 revisionist Western, Jeremiah Johnson, starring Robert Redford. Supporting titling uses ITC Avant Garde Gothic. The credits look to be set in Grotesque Light 126.

Alternate poster

Lobby card with set photography

From Nunavik Publications:

This beautiful 154 pages exhibition catalogue of Revival: Printmaking in Nunavik (2014–2019) [Inuktitut: ᓴᕐᖀᒋᐊᓪᓚᓂᖅ : ᐸᑎᒃᑎᒐᓕᐅᕐᓂᖅ ᓄᓇᕕᒻᒥ (2014–2019); French: Résurgence: l’estampe au Nunavik (2014–2019)] presented at the Musée d’art de Joliette in 2021, includes the 63 linocut prints done by 26 artists present in the exhibition along with a foreword of Lisa Koperqualuk, an essai of curator Lyne Bastien and an interview leaded by Olivia Lya Thomassie with curators Maggie Napartuk and Qumaq M. Mangiuk.

The works were presented at the Musée d’art de Joliette in collaboration with the 12th International Contemporary Print Biennale of Trois-Rivières and the Avataq Cultural Institute.

From Folkways Records:

Weakened by war and disease, Native peoples of Florida banded together with members of other tribes whom Europeans had forced southward from their homelands to form the Seminoles in the 18th century. Though a large number of Seminoles were relocated to Oklahoma, many stayed in Florida, especially in the Everglades. Dr. Frances Densmore (1867–1957) collected these recordings from 1931 to 1933 on repeat visits to two reservations in Florida. Densmore spent most of her life studying and recording American Indian music, an unlikely career path for a woman at a time when it was unheard of for a proper lady even to travel to “wild” areas.

Ronald Clyne designed the cover using a photograph taken by Densmore, plus one of the more ridiculous additions to the Bookman genre: the single-style Bookman Meola comes with “197 rather clumsily-drawn swash characters”, in the words of Mark Simonson. Although the typeface offered up to eight different glyphs per character, Clyne stuck to one form per glyph – with the exception of the a. The cover was produced in two color variants, in a reddish brown and in purple.

[More info on Discogs]

First American edition of The Bridge in the Jungle by B. Traven. The story was originally serialized in the German daily Vorwärts in 1927 and published in an extended book form in 1929, as Die Brücke im Dschungel. From Wikipedia:

In the novel, Traven first dealt in detail with the question of the First Nations in South and North America and the conflicting values and traditions between white settler cultures and indigenous cultures throughout the Americas; these themes detailing the problems of colonization dominated the Jungle Novels published in the 1930s.

All text on the dust jacket is drawn by hand. While the script is entirely custom, the bold caps represent an example of lettering derived from a typeface: it’s based on Cartoon Bold a.k.a. Fresko fett. Howard A. Trafton’s design was issued by the Bauer foundry just two years before, in 1936.

Identity design made by Estudio Vicencio for various events developed by the Subdirección Nacional de Pueblos Originarios (Chilean Office for Native Peoples) related to revitalizing indigenous languages. Among them are the contemporary indigenous art fair meeting of Indigenous Cultures; the announcement of the Sello Artesanía Indígena (SAI), a seal of indigenous crafts, for 2019 and 2022; and a corresponding website. All design pieces make extensive use of the Chercán typeface (PampaType) designed by Chilean type designer Francisco Gálvez Pizarro.

Sello Artesanía Indígena (SAI; English: Indigenous Handicraft Seal) issued these catalogs of selected indigenous handicraft pieces. It’s part of an editorial program and identity designed by Estudio Vicencio for the Subdirección Nacional de Pueblos Originarios (Chilean Office for Native Peoples). The whole visual system makes extensive use of the Chercán type family by PampaType.

Voces creadoras: Diálogos entre cultoras indígenas y afrodescendientes (“Creative Voices: Dialogues between Indigenous and Afro-descendant representatives”) is a publication that recognizes indigenous women creators who preserve their ancestors’ legacy throughout their work.

The booklet was designed for the Subdirección Nacional de Pueblos Originarios (Chilean Office for Native Peoples) on the indigenous languages of Chile. It uses Chercán (PampaType) in all its styles.

Lydian Cursive in use for the jacket of the 1954 novel Mist on the River. Written by Hubert Evans (1892–1986), it has been “described as the first Canadian novel ever to present a realistic portrait of First Nations people as its central characters”.

Note the use of the alternate terminal e in “the”. The author’s name and the spine lettering is added in Lydian’s roman style.

Lords of the Earth is the title of Jules Loh’s history of the Navajo, published in 1971 by Crowell-Collier Press with a foreword by Peter MacDonald, Chairman or the Navajo Tribal Council.

For the jacket design, Walter Harper combined stacked and interlocked Trooper Roman with equally tight-spaced caps from News Gothic and a photograph of Tsé Bii’Ndzisgaii – Monument Valley. The interior design is uncredited. It uses Neuland licht with Futura Light for the title page and chapter beginnings. The text typeface is Rudolph Ruzicka’s Primer.

This can is a good reminder that packaging designs can have gorgeous period typography – here with Ed Benguiat’s lovely Newlock Condensed – and still suck. On his Stranger Finds blog, Tom pointedly describes what’s wrong with it:

From the aisle of misfit groceries comes this racially insensitive can of extruded corn in the shape of canoes, otherwise known as “Dippy Canoes”.

The name is a play on the famous Battle of Tippecanoe in which Indiana Governor (and later, 9th president) William Henry Harrison battled Native Americans who had formed a confederacy to oppose U.S. expansion into Native American territory. The Native Americans lost, of course, and to add insult to injury, 150 years later Quaker Oats would name a snack food after their defeat and feature a stereotypical caricature of one of their own. Harrison only survived 30 days of his presidential term before succumbing to typhoid, so I guess that was some consolation to the Native Americans.

The snack was also sold under the Burry’s brand which became a division of the Quaker Oats Company in 1962. According to Retroland, Dippy Canoes were launched in 1967 and remained in supermarkets at least until the 70s arrived. It was advertised (with more racist stereotypes) in 1968.

Burry’s

Logo variants

Launched by the CANA Foundation, Generation Cana is —

a concept by an established conservationist who wants to popularise and inspire a new and diverse generation of Americans to fall in love with their natural landscapes and support rewilding – of their own worldviews, and of the lands they live on.

The Cana Foundation (CF) supports research, policy and action to support the wellbeing of horses and burros in North America, and the role they play in America’s iconic prairie and grassland ecosystems. With strong connections to first nations communities and the nexus of social justice and environmental issues, CF’s founder wanted to reach more people and inspire a new audience to take action in ways that went beyond specific policy solutions.

The graphic identity was designed by Studio Chenchen with a range of new logos to promote the foundation through various printed and digital media. Studio Chenchen comments:

The brand concept, Love Songs to America, is based on revitalising North American Romanticism.

Its visual language draws on iconic precedents in North American naturalism that we updated to reach modern, urban audiences. An internal brand manifesto was established to crystalise the brand’s purpose, tone of voice and personality, along with a set of illustrative templates, design applications, and targeted messaging to demonstrate how the brand can be applied to achieve the clients goals.

Logo version ft. Kerozene, Swear, and Copperplate Gothic

Logo version in Swear and Copperplate Gothic

Kerozene and Editorial New Italic

Playlist covers ft. Kerozene and Editorial New Italic

Manifesto featuring Swear, Sharp Sans, and an unidentified serif [edit: it’s Eiko, see comments].

Instagram template ft. Swear, Copperplate Gothic, and Mighty Slab

Longsleeves

Swear and Sharp Sans, with an unidentified serif for the URL

Benguiat Indian* in a near-LTypI use on the cover of a Native American exploitation novel by John Frederick Lange Jr. (b. 1931), published under his pen name John Norman, best known as the author of the Gor series of science fantasy novels. Cover art by Thomas Beechum.

Benguiat Indian is Serendipity with bifurcated serifs. Buffalo is a rounded variant. See also Benguiat Zenedipity, a spinoff with flared bottom halves.

From the back cover:

Standing Rock, Dakota …
In the summer of the year preceding the Massacre of Wounded Knee [of 1890], there was much unrest among the recently defeated Sioux. For defeat did not sit easily on these warriors of the great plains the transition from fighting nomad to reservation farmer did not take place; and there were those who rode secretly with the call to the Ghost Dance and war.
ln that fateful summer there came to Standing Rock a white man, a doctor, fleeing from the threat of death – Edward Chance, who, willy-nilly, would become blood brother to the Sioux and play a powerful part in their last great uprising.
A broad, sweeping pioneer historical, rich with the color, the life, the terror of a time that will never be again.

Published by Ballantine Books in 1970, three years before the Wounded Knee Occupation took place.

*) Note that the term “Indian” is considered problematic, for being an exonym and also for being ambiguous. While many older Native Americans self-identify as “Indians” or “American Indians”, younger Native Americans often identify as “Indigenous” or “Aboriginal” today.

Ministerio de Desarrollo Social y Familia a través de la Unidad de Coordinación de Asuntos Indígenas (UCAI). License: All Rights Reserved.

Ministerio de Desarrollo Social y Familia a través de la Unidad de Coordinación de Asuntos Indígenas (UCAI). License: All Rights Reserved.

In 2019, the International Year of Indigenous Languages, the Chilean Ministry of Social Development and Family (Indigenous Affairs Unit) published a series of dictionaries of native languages ​​in Chile, following a policy of cultural revitalization and inclusive development. Now a revised second edition followed.

These four dictionaries dedicated to the Aymara, Quechua, Mapuche, and Rapa Nui languages are a significant contribution to the future of the various native languages spoken in Chile. The dictionaries are available for free download. All covers were designed entirely with Amster. The interiors are set in ITC Franklin Gothic, with Ronnia used for headings.

Ministerio de Desarrollo Social y Familia a través de la Unidad de Coordinación de Asuntos Indígenas (UCAI). License: All Rights Reserved.

Ministerio de Desarrollo Social y Familia a través de la Unidad de Coordinación de Asuntos Indígenas (UCAI). License: All Rights Reserved.

Ministerio de Desarrollo Social y Familia a través de la Unidad de Coordinación de Asuntos Indígenas (UCAI). License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: asuntosindigenas.ministeriodesarrollosocial.gob.cl Ministerio de Desarrollo Social y Familia a través de la Unidad de Coordinación de Asuntos Indígenas (UCAI). License: All Rights Reserved.

Diccionario de la lengua Aymara / Aru Pirwa Aymara

Source: asuntosindigenas.ministeriodesarrollosocial.gob.cl Ministerio de Desarrollo Social y Familia a través de la Unidad de Coordinación de Asuntos Indígenas (UCAI). License: All Rights Reserved.

Diccionario de la lengua Quechua / Qheswa Simi Taqe

Source: asuntosindigenas.ministeriodesarrollosocial.gob.cl Ministerio de Desarrollo Social y Familia a través de la Unidad de Coordinación de Asuntos Indígenas (UCAI). License: All Rights Reserved.

Diccionario de la lengua Mapuche / Wipümzugulwe Mapuche

Source: asuntosindigenas.ministeriodesarrollosocial.gob.cl Ministerio de Desarrollo Social y Familia a través de la Unidad de Coordinación de Asuntos Indígenas (UCAI). License: All Rights Reserved.

Diccionario de la lengua Rapa Nui / He Puka Rara Rauhuru Vanana Rapa Nui

Source: www.facebook.com Conadi Gob. License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: www.facebook.com Conadi Gob. License: All Rights Reserved.

Book jacket (front)

Cloud Eyes is a children’s book written by Kathryn Lasky (b. 1944) and illustrated by Barry Moser (b. 1940). It was published by Harcourt, Brace & Co. in 1994.

Cloud Eyes, a young dreamer, is his tribe’s only hope for bringing honey back to the lodges of his people. So begins this Native American boy’s quest.

From the book’s colophon:

The illustrations in this book were done in graphite on plate bristol. The display type was set in Rustikalis Black by Latent Lettering, New York, New York. The text type was set in Trump Medieval by Thompson Type, San Diego, California. Printed and bound by Tien Wah Press, Singapore. Production supervision by Warren Wallerstein and Kent MacElwee. Designed by Barry Moser and Camilla Filancia

By default, the letter o in Rustikalis is open at the top, with an implied calligraphic loop. The designers apparently disliked this detail. Maybe they feared it was too ambiguous for young readers. In any case, the gap was closed – without removing the tiny remaining spur. The letter now can’t be mistaken for a v, but it’s also less animated. Apart from this minor criticism, it’s a beautifuly designed book.

Book cover with foil-stamped title

Title page

Spread with an enlarged colored initial. The open top in the capital O apparently wasn’t deemed problematic.

In his magnum opus The Osages: Children of the Middle Waters, John Joseph Mathews (1894–1979) preserved many collected stories and the oral history of the Osage. From University of Oklahoma Press:

This account of the Osages, a Siouan tribe once centered in the area now occupied by St. Louis, later on small streams in southwestern Missouri and southeastern Kansas, then in northeastern Oklahoma, is a spiritual one. Their quest in the centuries-long record was for the meaning of Wah’Kon-Tah, the Great Mysteries. In war, in peace, in camps and villages, in their land of the Middle Waters, the Osages met all of the changes and hardships people are likely to meet anywhere.

First published in hardback in 1961, the book was issued as paperback in December 1981. The image shows the current paperback edition from 2016. It’s not clear if the 1981 edition had the same cover design. The typefaces in use were both available in 1981 as phototype, and in 2016 in digital form: they are Rustikalis Bold, an uncredited design issued by VGC sometime between 1973 and 1977, and digitized by Malcolm Wooden in 2007 as Rustikalis DT, and ITC Galliard Italic, designed Matthew Carter for Mergenthaler Linotype in 1978 and now available from ITC.

Two posters designed by Zdeněk Ziegler in 1984 for Czechoslovak screenings of Winnetou films. The German-Yugoslavian adaptations of Karl May’s novels were directed by Harald Reinl. The pale brown poster shown above is for Winnetou (1963; Czech: Vinnetou, English: Apache Gold), the red one’s for the sequel Winnetou 2. Teil (1964; Czech: Vinnetou – Rudý gentleman, English: Last of the Renegades). Both feature a pile of caps from Filmotype Quentin.

Cover and layout for this bilingual dictionary (English and Inuktitut) of traditional Inuktitut names, published by Publications Nunavik (Avataq Cultural Institute). Compiled by genealogist Martha Palliser, the reference work was designed as a bidirectional book, with the back cover showing the English version, and the interior printed in two spot colors.

Exhibition posters in a Paris Métro station.

In 2019, the Fondation Cartier in Paris hosted the exhibition Claudia Andujar. La Lutte Yanomami, showing the work of the renowned photographer and activist. Famous worldwide for her devotion to the Yanomami, one of the largest indigenous group of Brazil, Claudia Andujar has spent fifty years of her life documenting and fighting for the preservation of the Yanomami people and their culture.

Pursuing their collaboration with the museum, design studio deValence was in charge of the visual identity of the exhibition. It’s characterized by the use of Mars Condensed from Production Type, which is present in all media to catch the eye. In fact, the vertical lines of the condensed typeface appear almost as stripes, contrasting on the posters with the bright-colored homogenous photographs. The letters somehow evoke the verticality of the Amazon forest in which the Yanomami live, an impression that’s reinforced by the exhibition’s scenography, with the walls painted in green. However, the effect of Mars Condensed on the viewer is not one of natural serenity: It rather is imposant, visible, urgent – very much like the recognition the Yanomami have been fighting for, for so long. Through the use of Mars Condensed, deValence succeeded in visually transmitting the dedication of Claudia Andujar to her cause.

Mars Condensed is paired with Borges, a typeface family by the Latin American foundry PampaType and named after Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges.

Introductory panel in the exhibition, with text in French and English.

French titles in Mars Condensed are combined with all-caps Borges for the English version below.

Exhibition leaflet.

Detail from the multilingual website. In addition to Borges and Mars Condensed, the website uses FCartier. The custom sans serif by Fonderie Cartier appears for the small print at the bottom.

Website detail with all-caps Borges Negra Italic for the chapter title and Mars Condensed for the artist’s name and the navigational hints.