The first edition of Homage to Catalonia, by George Orwell, published by Secker & Warburg in 1938. The designer is unknown (small initial K in the bottom left corner of the cover). The book jacket uses Motor, the spine uses the undecorated variant of the same face, called Dynamo. The imperfections in the type on the cover could be because it was possibly redrawn for the mechanical.

“Despite a modest print run of 1500 copies, “Homage to Catalonia ran so counter to prevailing opinion that in its first 12 years, it sold only 600 copies; yet it was perhaps the most rigorously clear view of the Spanish reality in the English language” (New York Times).

Orwell Foundation describes the book this way:

Orwell went to Spain in late 1936, and enlisted to fight for the POUM, an anti-Stalinist communist party. While there, he was shot in the neck and forced to flee the country after the POUM were declared an illegal organisation. Orwell’s experiences in Spain turned him decisively against Soviet communism, and the book’s criticisms of the Communists proved controversial at home – his usual publisher, Gollancz, would not print the book, which appeared in 1938 from Secker & Warburg

Character is a multimedia project by French artist Paul Heintz. It crosses the boundaries of fiction and documentary to find Winston Smith, the famous character in the 1984 novel by George Orwell. Paul Heintz comments (translated from the French):

I often imagined meeting a character from a novel, wondering if it would fit the image, physical, psychic, that I got used to reading. I then looked for namesakes of emblematic romantic figures, with the desire to confront my projections with the reality of those who bear a name charged with a history that is not theirs. I stopped on Winston Smith, the hero of 1984, who seemed to me to join my research concerns: zones of tension between intimacy and politics, individual and fiction, authority and social norm. According to the English directory, there are at least 25 people with the same surname as this character currently residing in London. Here I am in the footsteps of Winston Smith.

The book Character Journal was designed by Atelier Choque Le Goff together with Quintal Atelier and published by Les Éditions Extensibles in an edition of 300 copies. Maria is used for the jacket and cover as well as for titles, running titles and page numbers in the interior. An unidentified serif and IBM Plex Mono are used as text typefaces.

Cover and interior pages of this special edition (70th anniversary) of George Orwell’s 1984, published by Companhia das Letras and designed by Kiko Farkas and Felipe Sabatini.

The edition features a visual essay by visual artist Regina Silveira, a comprehensive selection of essays about 1984, and a timeline of iconic book covers.

The title of the book and the interior titles use Knockout, the interior text is set in Noe Text.

For the cover of a book about the English language, David Pearson chose a typeface with English roots. Caslon Rounded dates back to 1836. Specimens from 1842 and 1861 in the collection of St Bride Printing Library show solid, open, and decorated variations.

The first rounded typefaces appeared almost simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic during the 1830s, in wood in the USA and in metal from the Caslon foundry. — Commercial Type

A digital interpretation was designed by Paul Barnes and Christian Schwartz in 2015. Their Caslon Rounded has one filled weight with italics and one shaded weight with layers. As of 2018, it’s unreleased.

In 1978, the design publication U&lc began a series where graphic designers found samples of their own work from the past that they wish they could do over.

U&lc editor Herb Lubalin was asked to be the first designer to take part. He chose to redesign a series of posters he created in 1966 that introduced the winning typeface designs chosen for the VGC International Typeface Design Competition.

In addition to creating what he considered new and improved poster designs, Lubalin also provided a short written explanation of what was wrong with the original and how he arrived at his solutions.

What follows is both the before and after of each poster as well as Lubalin's thoughts on the designs. While it’s open to debate as to whether the 1978 versions are always an improvement, Lubalin's explanations offer a fascinating glimpse into the thinking that went into his work.

“I’ve always had a fond spot in my heart for this quote and for this design interpretation which I feel adds impact to its meaning. The typeface in the original design, however (as I now see it), didn’t exactly serve the purposes of the concept as well as the ITC Machine Bold illustrated below. To reinforce the idea of the black and white horizontals, I needed a typeface that would butt one line against another. ITC Machine Bold was not available at that time, so I used a typeface I felt most suited my purposes. The rounded nature of the original face [Jay Gothic], as you can see, did not work as well as the flat top and bottom surfaces of the Machine Bold. I may be splitting hairs, but that’s what good design is all about. Or should be.”

“There is a glaring design error in this original poster. The impact of the message depends upon the beauty in the styling of the words, Go To Hell, unencumbered by the competition with fanciful typography. In fact, the beginning and end of the quote surrounding the Spencerian script, I have always felt, should embody an element of ugliness to contrast with, and amplify the essence of, the meaning of Caskie Stinnet’s words. I have, therefore, substituted Italia Bold with underscores in place of the original script [Vivaldi]. Since I am somewhat of a diplomat myself, I don’t wish to imply that Italia is an ugly typeface. It’s a beautiful typeface, made somewhat blatant by the addition of the underscores. Besides which, if you will permit a cliche, beauty (or ugliness) is in the eye of the beholder.”

“Oscar Wilde, who was responsible for this quote, once said, ‘There is no sin except stupidity.’ And to him a misprint of his words represented the height of ignorance. He also said, ‘Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.’ In this particular poster, I was guilty of a sin based on experience – the combined effect resulting in a stupid mistake. The era of the quill pen had definitely ceased to exist during the heyday of Oscar Wilde. He wrote with an ordinary pen just as we have done all our lives (until the felt tip pen took over). So, herewith I have eliminated the quill, which was entirely unnecessary in the first place. All you designers and art directors who know how to spell (bad spelling is a common failure among many of us) will undoubtedly get this message, unaided by the visualization of a goose feather – an entirely superfluous prop.” Arrow had to make way for ITC Benguiat.

“Although the typographic styling in the original poster looks uniquely like computerized cheese in its letterforms [Amelia], hindsight dictates that its entire shape relate to my preconceived image of the recognizable hunk of Swiss. So I squared everything up to define the outside configuration as cheese [using ITC Serif Gothic]. The use of an engraving of a mouse and a photograph of the trap robbed the original design of the reality of the situation as defined by the message. Our new rodent is displaying an air of abject disappointment conspicuously missing in the original. And, remember this: Even without designers, ‘Life goes on for ever like the gnawing of a mouse.’”

“Once again, too much is too little. Why use two ideas – one conflicting with the other – when one good one is enough? In this original poster [in Visa], the mediocre symbolism of old age conflicts with the effective symbolism of death, the soul of the message (pun intended) exemplified by the reclining ‘i’. It didn’t take very long to recognize this error and rectify it emphatically by eliminating the old rocking chair and juxtaposing the “i” in the open where one can’t miss its significance. Lending emphasis to this positioning is the author’s name centered below. One more comment. I used the typeface, ITC Garamond Book Condensed, because in my opinion, it is one of the few beautifully designed condensed roman faces available. By using a condensed face, I was able to create a larger typographic image and thus create more impact for the symbolism. Death and taxes are inevitable, but good design is not.”

“A common fault of most designers – present company included – is never to know when to stop after you’ve got a good thing going. In this particular case, I made the obvious too obvious by turning the ‘O’ on its side to graphically illustrate the word ‘mouth’. As you can see in this new design, that added fillip was entirely unnecessary since the ‘O’ prints in red and says mouth any way you look at it. I call this overemphasizing an already emphatic solution. I also tend to feel that the original use of the upper and lower case tends to obscure the small type which is the heart of the message. So much for this anatomical explanation.” The original poster uses Domning Antiqua, the revised version is in ITC Korinna.

“I’m afraid that I don’t have any great words of wisdom to impart on why I changed the type styling of this poster to ITC American Typewriter Light Condensed. The original type [Wolf Antiqua] was quite adequate. But – since the nature of this article dictates that I give an intelligent, if not erudite, argument for my changes – let me put it this way: First, I think American Typewriter is a swell typeface. And second, the poster’s original typeface was designed in the late ’60s. The subject matter spans three generations. In searching for a typeface that would be generic to this span of time, I selected American Typewriter as being uniquely appropriate. And third, it's ten years later and I had to bring our modern Ms. up-to-date. Enough chronology!”

“In this original poster the straw, literally, broke the camel’s back – thereby (in my opinion) breaking the back of the design. Of these eight posters, I find my original solution to this one the most unsatisfactory from a design standpoint. In it you find two solutions to the same problem where one, or the other, would have been much more effective. In fact, the two solutions negate each other. We, as designers, sometimes tend to underestimate the intelligence of others and are often guilty of overemphasis. Given a second chance, I believe that the new poster (below), with emphasis on the additional esses running off the page, the elimination of the nefarious straw that broke the camel’s back, plus the use of ITC Tiffany Heavy Caps, [in place of Antikva Margaret] solves all the problems that should have been solved then years ago. In retrospect, this message by Robert Moses sums up, in no uncertain terms, my 1978 reactions to most of these 1960s posters.”

60th anniversary edition of George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in 2009 by Penguin Classics, with a type-heavy cover designed by Jon Gray at gray318. The front showns neither the title nor the author’s name, only doublespeak slogans, set with each line alternating between Brothers (with a modified ‘A’) and Heroic Condensed. The back features hand-lettering of the repeated phrase “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER”, referencing a page in the journal of Winston Smith, the story’s protagonist.

I’m not sure if it was an intentional reference or not, but the back cover counters the front not only in its message, style (lettering vs. type), and color reversal, but it also seems to oppose the typography directly: the typeface Brothers is set big on the front.

For his most recent addition to Penguin’s Great Orwell series, David Pearson used Caslon Doric, an early sans serif originally produced by the Caslon foundry in the 1880s. The typeface was revived by Paul Barnes of Commercial Type and is yet to be released.

In a previous post about another British book cover from 2013, I wrote: “What looks like a custom dry brush letter­ing job at first glance has actu­ally star­ted out with type.” The very same is true for this cover by David Pearson. Here, the basis was the Brush Extreme style of B-Movie Retro.

This script typeface by Die Typonauten is “a typographic homage to horror films from the 1930s and 1940s, featuring Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and others; films about vampires, monsters from the swamp, and creepy mummies.” — Peter Reichard

For this use, the letterforms were heavily customized. Not only were they considerably condensed; the tailed ‘l’ was replaced with the straight ‘I’, ‘A’ got a longer crossbar, and ‘F’ was completely reimagined.

Animal Farm was first published in 1945 and made into an animated film a decade later.
See the first US edition here and more from Penguin’s Great Orwell series on Creative Review.

First American edition, published by Harcourt, Brace & Co. in 1946.