About the book, by publisher Book*hug Press:

From award–winning French writer Sibylle Grimbert comes The Last of Its Kind, a moving story of friendship, trust, respect, and the desire to endure and survive. In 1835, Gus, a young zoologist, is sent to Iceland by the Natural History Museum of Lille to study North Atlantic fauna. It is there that he witnesses the bloody massacre of a colony of great auks. Amidst the violence, the curious researcher pulls a single wounded bird from the water, unaware that he has recovered what will eventually be the last of its kind. Over the next fifteen years, Gus comes to realize that he is closely observing something inconceivable: the extinction of a species. From there, a singular preoccupation is born, and the inevitable fate of his feathered friend eclipses everything else around him.

Originally published as Le dernier des siens, the Hungarian edition was translated by Kornélia Kiss and published by Magvető Kiadó as Az ​utolsó egyed. The skeleton printed in spot UV on the cover instantly hints at a grim conclusion. Linotype’s Bodoni Bold Condensed is used for the title, combined with Adobe Jenson Italic for the author’s name.

Sebastian Vigueras. License: All Rights Reserved.

La Típica en la Vasconcelos, 5 October 2025

During 2025, the Orquesta Típica de la Ciudad de México (OTCM) offered a series of free concerts throughout the capital, for which these promotional poster was created.

The layout of the elements follows a vertical or radial hierarchy where photographs of musicians or instruments—such as the salterio or the marimba—act as indices of Mexico City’s sonic tradition. The use of illustrations or flat color shapes aims to modernize the Orchestra’s image, moving it away from a static perception and bringing it closer to a dynamic urban audience. Furthermore, the color palette likely aligns with the institutional identity of the Secretariat of Culture, applied with high contrasts to ensure legibility in public spaces. A system of visual weights was established where the OTCM name stands out above the time and location details, allowing for quick scanning. The typographic selection likely includes a seriffed, calligraphic typeface—Adobe Aldine—for headlines to evoke the history and elegance of an orchestra with over 140 years of heritage, complemented by sans-serif typefaces—Roboto and Cabin—for technical data to ensure clear readability at various distances. Finally, the management of leading and tracking is optimized to avoid dense typographic blocks, maintaining an “air” that allows the design to breathe.

Sebastian Vigueras. License: All Rights Reserved.

Ninfas y Nereidas, 12 October 2025

The poster for the Ninfas y Nereidas concert represents a transition towards a more layered and atmospheric visual language. The background is a rich, impressionistic tapestry of warm-toned flowers that anchors the composition, reflecting the floral tradition of the San Francisco Tlaltenco area.

The typographic system introduces Gabriola, whose fluid, stylistic alternates and elongated swashes mirror the “aquatic” and mythological theme of the Nereids. This expressive display face is used for the concert title, creating a sharp contrast with the structured, institutional presence of Adobe Aldine at the top. For the more complex information—such as the extensive repertoire list and venue details—Roboto and Cabin are again used to maintain high legibility against the textured background. The layout balances a large, centered photograph of the full orchestra with a clear, white footer for institutional logos, ensuring that the decorative elements do not compromise the informational clarity.

Sebastian Vigueras. License: All Rights Reserved.

Ritmos de Otoño, 19 October 2025

The poster for the Ritmos de Otoño (“Autumn Rhythms”) concert features a frame-within-a-frame composition that emphasizes the relationship between the venue and the season. The top of the layout is dominated by a lush, colorful floral arrangement that creates an organic border, contrasting with the bright blue sky.

The typographic hierarchy is centered and highly structured. The concert title is set in Adobe Aldine’s Display size, utilizing its graceful, flaring terminals to reflect the organic nature of the floral motifs. It is used for the “Orquesta Típica” name at the top, providing a stable, classical anchor for the design. A distinctive detail is the venue address, which is set in an arch following the architectural curve of the museum’s orange facade, effectively integrating the text with the photographic image of the building’s entrance.

Sebastian Vigueras. License: All Rights Reserved.

La muerte se quiere llevar a la Típica, 9 November 2025

This poster for the Día de Muertos special concert, titled La muerte se quiere llevar a la Típica, showcases a sophisticated integration of typography and architectural photography. The composition uses a diagonal perspective provided by the museum’s historic stone columns, creating a sense of depth that guides the eye toward the papel picado and the dark interior where the concert title is placed.

The typographic system relies on a high-contrast hierarchy to manage a large amount of information. The main header and the concert title are once more set in Adobe Aldine Display, whose classical serif structure is paired with a hand-drawn illustration of a skeleton, evoking the iconic style of José Guadalupe Posada. This choice reinforces the cultural heritage of the celebration. To balance the ornate title, venue details and technical data are organized using Roboto and Cabin, utilizing different weights and sizes to maintain clarity. A notable design choice is the placement of the location details on the stone pillar, treating the text as a physical part of the architecture. The color palette is somber yet accented by the vibrant colors of the traditional papel picado, ensuring the poster captures the festive yet solemn spirit of the season.

From Bureau Strada:

Poster for a heavy metal concert and performance event at Bad Bonn, in collaboration with Nathan Meyer. The aim was to design a poster that was coherent with the event, while subverting common heavy metal clichés. To provide a contrast to the handcrafted feel of the linocut, the Metaballs typeface by Maxitype introduces more geometric forms, subtly referencing the bone motif of the illustration.

The F4 poster was printed in a black only version, and another 50 × 70 cm version is printed in offset silver and black with a matte varnish by Cric Print in Fribourg. The concert was organised by Maxime Barras & Maxime Papaux, under the name Maxi-Maxi.

Marzia Migliora’s works provide a critical representation of the consequences that an economy based on fossil fuels is having on the planet, showing how humanity’s drive for progress has a direct impact on today’s compromised ecosystems. The environmental sound installation Partitura multispecie andante – created in collaboration with the historic Roman studio of sound effects for cinema, Marinelli Effetti Sonori – consists of a soundtrack of the various sections that make up the paleontological and litho-mineralogical collections of ISPRA (Istituto Superiore per la Protezione e la Ricerca Ambientale) (Higher Institute for Environmental Protection and Research).

Act ① of Partitura multispecie andante (Andante Multispecies Score) was performed on December 14, 2022, at the MUCIV (Museo delle Civiltà), with sound effects by Marinelli Effetti Sonori Srl. The performance was made possible thanks to funding from Sector VI of the Ministry of Culture.

Sound effects: Marinelli Effetti Sonori Srl

Foley artists: Massimo Marinelli, Giulia Marinelli, Enzo Di Liberto, Daniele Di Pentima

Sound editor: Enrico Mereu

Recording and mix engineer: Fabio Fortunati

Technical director: Edoardo Pietrogrande
Curation: Matteo Lucchetti

The vinyl records were cut by Vinylab Studio in an edition of ninety copies plus nine artist’s proofs. The typography uses ABC Walter Neue throughout.

Astrapi is a French biweekly magazine for children aged 7–11, published by Bayard Éditions. Borel was used for these scientific illustrations in Astrapi № 1019, September 2023.

For a concert-lecture titled Danse Macabre at the RSU Anatomy Museum, I created a poster and a small brochure. For this occasion, I found the perfect font to use: Fenul Compressed, which draws inspiration from an anatomy book—specifically the chapter on bones. Fenul was designed by Jana Papierniková. The secondary font in use is Season Mix. Both fonts are available from Displaay Type Foundry.

This concert-lecture merges multiple art forms—music, dance, and visual art—into an interactive experience. I wanted to capture the graphic expressiveness of the skeleton while juxtaposing it with the fluidity of dance, as depicted in the photography by Kristīne Madjāre. The goal was to evoke a connection between medieval and modern perspectives on life and death. The hand-sized program features a flipbook effect, allowing the depicted dancer to “come to life” through movement.

The lecture is designed for a young audience and is supported by the Latvian school program.

Front cover

Album art for Ixnay on the Hombre by American punk rock band The Offspring, released in 1997 by Columbia Records. Art direction is credited to Sean Evans.

The cover is themed around the Mexican Day of the Dead. The front cover illustration is by Enrique Chagoya. The illustrations on the back cover are by José Guadalupe Posada.

The front cover uses Norton Mr. Bones, while the back cover uses House of Death.

[More info on Discogs]

Back cover

Poster

Japanese packshot with the cover art of MediEvil (1999)

Harrington was used for the logo of the Japanese release of the video game MediEvil. It's primarily featured in all caps, safe for the first e, with letterforms of varying size. Some of the letter shapes have been customised, such as the first e and the Is. The logo appears in the game itself, as well as on the game packaging, and in advertisements for the game.

The font used for Japanese text is JTC Win ZM9 (see comments below for the source). Some of the character shapes have been customised with flourishes and sharper ends.

See also the post about the logo as used in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.

The 2019 remake developed by Other Ocean Emeryville for PS4 reuses the Japanese logo in Japan, with additional glow effects.

EU packshot with the cover art for MediEvil (1998)

Ticonderoga was used for the logo of the 1998 video game MediEvil. It’s featured in all caps, with letterforms of varying size and condensation, effects, and a custom skull on top of the second I. The logo appears in the game itself, as well as on the game packaging, and in advertisements for the game.

See also the post about the logo as used in Japan.

The 2019 remake developed by Other Ocean Emeryville for PS4 uses an updated version of the logo, with letterforms fit to a curved baseline.

Source: www.flickr.com Scan by Boy de Haas (edited). License: All Rights Reserved.

Eichmann: His Career and Crimes is a book about Adolf Eichmann, one of the major organisers of the Holocaust. It was written by Charles Wighton (1913–?), a Scottish journalist who reported from post-war Germany, began studying Nazi war crimes, and attended the Nuremberg trials. The book was published in 1961, the year in which Eichmann was trialed in Jerusalem. Shown here is the cover of the Dutch edition, translated by A.J. Richel and published by Uitgeverij Het Spectrum in the Prisma Boeken imprint.

The haunting portrait depicts the SS officer in his uniform, with a face composed of dead bodies of Holocaust victims. The cover is signed “DOBE” or similar.

The typeface used for “Eichmann” is Mosaik. It’s the only published typeface design by Martin Kausche (1915–2007). Born in Stettin, he studied under F.H. Ernst Schneidler in Stuttgart and later in Berlin. From 1941, Kausche worked for the Organisation Todt. After the war, he settled in the Worpswede artist colony and designed book jackets for S. Fischer, among other publishers. His Mosaik was first cast in 1954, years after the Nazi regime was terminated. Stylistically the design has nothing to do with the simplified Gotischs that became popular in the 1930s. Stempel advertised it as “the latest manifestation of the uncial idea”. Why was it selected for this grim topic, then? It’s probably because Mosaik can still be commonly read as being linked to the German lettering tradition informed by blackletter, with its gnarly strokes and outmoded ductus for some glyphs. But unlike most proper broken script typefaces, it’s easily readable to a Dutch audience.

Today marks the 79th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration and extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau by Soviet troops on 27 January 1945.

Source: www.flickr.com Uploaded to Flickr by Letterform Archive. License: CC BY-NC-SA.

Index card for Mosaik

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

During Halloween 2016, The Hague based indie band Vuigtuig released their second album, full of macabre and morbid humour and haunting fictional horror sound tracks. The album artwork uses the recently released Krana Fat for its band logo, and the album title is rendered in Nihilist (released just in time for finishing the artwork). Information is set in a mix of Sentinel, Venus Condensed and Errata.

Twenty-eight years before Stranger Things established ITC Benguiat as the serif of choice for horror, it was used for the cover of Feast.

TheStrangeDoor comments:

We've got a ridiculous cover with all the fixins – embossment, cutouts, a pair of delighted skeletons cooking up some kids. This is some A+ work.

Graham Masterton’s horror novel is about a restaurant critic who tries to rescue his teenage son from a cult of auto-cannibals named the Celestines. It was later renamed to Ritual.

[More info on ISFDB]

#1, Dracula Returns! (1973) with cover art by Harry Borgman

This is the first edition of the Dracula Horror Series, a.k.a. The Return of Dracula, written by Robert Lory (b. 1936) and published by Pinnacle Books between 1973 and 1975.

The typography is largely the same for all nine volumes, with Quaint Roman used for the titles and Contact Bold Condensed for the author’s name, the series title, and the teaser texts. On the cover for #7, Contact got replaced by the similar Monotype Clarendon Condensed for the teaser. And on the last two volumes, these texts are set in Record Gothic Heavy Condensed.

[More info on ISFDB]

#2, The Hand of Dracula! (1973) with cover art by Harry Borgman

#3, Dracula’s Brothers (1973) with cover art by Harry Borgman

#4, Dracula’s Gold (1973) with cover art by Harry Borgman

#5, The Drums of Dracula (1974) with cover art by J. Thompson

#6, The Witching of Dracula (1974)

#7, Dracula’s Lost World (1974) with cover art by Victor Valla

#8, Dracula’s disciple (1975) with cover art by Victor Valla

#9, Challenge to Dracula (1975) with cover art by Victor Valla

Cooper Black is not exactly known for its scary qualities (unless your ink cartridge runs low). Charles Keeping’s illustration hence has to do all the heavy lifting for conjuring the creepiness, together with the ominous repetition in the title. The latter is a trademark of the various horror anthologies compiled by Helen Hoke, see also Monsters, Monsters, Monsters and Creepies, Creepies, Creepies.

Weirdies, Weirdies, Weirdies is “a horrifying concatenation of the super-sur-real or almost or not-quite real”, with stories by Charles Keeping, Arthur Conan Doyle, H.P. Lovecraft, August Derleth, Franz Kafka, Patricia Highsmith, E.M.B. Nakuina, Theodore Sturgeon, and others.

[More info on ISFDB]

Title page

Dust jacket for Alfred A. Knopf’s first edition of Michael Crichton's bestselling science fiction novel Jurassic Park, designed by Chip Kidd. The front panel and spine of the jacket feature text set in Enge Steinschrift, later and perhaps more widely known as Akzidenz-Grotesk schmalhalbfett (medium condensed). The K has been slightly modified from its original form, wherein the diagonal strokes should meet at the vertical. Here, the strokes appear to meet in a T, likely formed by artificially extending the upper diagonal stroke down to the lower half of the vertical.

A silhouette of a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, illustrated by Kidd and loosely based upon the famous specimen AMNH 5027, spans the front panel, spine and back panel of the jacket.

The back panel features an advance comment set in Franklin Gothic Condensed and an attribution set in Times. The front and back flaps also feature text set in Times. The spine and the title page feature Publicity Gothic. On the latter, additional text is set in Electra.

The front panel and spine of the jacket feature text set in Enge Steinschrift, later and perhaps more widely known as Akzidenz-Grotesk schmalhalbfett (medium condensed).

The back panel features an advance comment set in Franklin Gothic Condensed and an attribution set in Times.

A silhouette of a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, illustrated by Kidd and loosely based upon the famous specimen AMNH 5027, spans the front panel, spine and back panel of the jacket.

The front and back flaps also feature text set in Times.

The title on the spine is set in golden caps from Publicity Gothic.

The title page text is set in Publicity Gothic with additional text set in Electra.

Tanatopedia is an encyclopedia with entries on death, with illustrations by Caroline Murta. The crowdfunded project was designed to make the book sumptuous, a physical object that does not go unnoticed due to its size or theme. Sober, elegant and dark – words that define the aesthetic used for the design of the cover and inside.

The design includes illustrated drop caps and column-organized entries. The flickering terminals of VVS Nobleman, a typeface family chosen especially for the entries, refer to the mystery that the book evokes. The text is set with Adobe Jenson, with Cloister Initials. The cover additionally features Orpheus and Mrs Eaves.

The record-breaking number one bestseller from the UK's best-selling non-fiction author, Kay's Anatomy, brings Mindset all over its cover and also in inside pages. The book was released in October 2020 by Puffin Books, an imprint of Penguin Books. Illustrations by Henry Paker. Mindset is a hand-drawn display font by PintassilgoPrints. It’s loaded with alternates and comes with a lighter version – Mindset Slim – for added versatility.

The font is widely employed also in the promotional material, including a book trailer:

The typeface for the book interior appears to be Serifa; the blurb on the back cover uses Avenir. Despite all efforts, no designer credits were found. If you know who designed the book, please leave a comment.

Main poster for the 1988 Richard Donner movie Scrooged starring Bill Murray. Design by Dan Chapman. Photography by Timothy White. The title uses Spire with an alternate R. Bill Murray’s name and the blurb in the top left are set in ITC Galliard. The credits appear to set in all caps Univers Ultra Condensed in two sizes.

Gerstner-Programm FSL and Times in use throughout the artist monograph Hans Haacke: All Connected “surveying the storied career of German artist Hans Haacke, on the occasion of a major retrospective exhibition” at the New Museum, New York. The book is published by Phaidon and edited by Massimiliano Gioni and Gary Carrion-Murayari.

“Born in Germany in 1936, Hans Haacke is known for his intellectual and politically engaged art that has long shed light on systems of power. A pioneer of institutional critique, conceptual art, and environmental art, Haacke creates incisive, often site-specific works that call upon the viewer to engage or participate and thereby question invisible structural dynamics at play in society. This book offers an opportunity to revisit the artist's thought-provoking career in light of contemporary culture.” — Phaidon

This recording of Danse Macabre, op. 40 and Le Rouet d’Omphale, Op. 31 by Camille Saint-Saëns complemented by Henri Rabaud’s La procession nocturne, Op. 6 was performed by the Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra of New York, conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos. Released by Columbia Masterworks Records in 1951, the album comes with a cover designed by Alex Steinweiss. He paired all-lowercase Onyx with his signature handwriting.

In 2010, lettering artist and type designer Michael Doret turned the famous “Steinweiss Scrawl” into a digital font family in three weights and with numerous alternates, named Steinweiss Script. Whirled Peas NF by Nick Curtis is an earlier, less extensive and unofficial interpretation of this style, based on a showing titled “Whitestone Scrawl” (a malapropism of the German Steinweiss) included in Dan X. Solo’s book Showcard Alphabets.

[More info on Discogs]