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.

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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.

Loring Eutemey, long-time designer at Atlantic Records, was a frequent user of the services of Photo-Lettering, and an early adopter of many of the display novelties offered by the typesetting company in New York City. The cover for Throb, an album recorded by vibraphonist Gary Burton (b. 1943), is one of many examples.

Blimp was designed by Seymour Chwast. The co-founder of Push Pin Studios used the obese all-caps face in his own work in 1968. It was added to PLINC’s catalog before 1971, in three variants. Whether Blimp was available from them already in 1969, when Burton’s album was released, isn’t entirely clear. Eutemey might have gotten it directly from Chwast – he was a fellow studio member at Pushpin. So was Milton Glaser, who also made early use of Blimp in fall 1969.

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