Source: www.antikavion.cz Antikvariát Avion. License: All Rights Reserved.

Zelená kuchyně (1988) by Jan Jeník, Václav Větvička, and Sergej Michajlovič Skornjakov, with illustrations by Edita Plicková

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Czechoslovak publisher Lidové nakladatelství brought out a series of nature books in their Edice Planeta imprint. Zelená kuchyně (“Green kitchen”) is about vegetables and edible plants and Zelení ježci (“Green hedgehogs”) about cacti, while Zelený domov (“Green home”) deals with houseplants and Klenoty přírody (“Jewels of nature”) with minerals.

The cover designs are by Milan Albich (1925–2000), a painter, illustrator, and graphic artist from Krupina, Slovakia. He rendered the titles in ITC Serif Gothic. in all-lowercase letters from the Black weight, likely using the Letraset adaptation for dry transfer lettering. Unlike Mecanorma’s – or the official digitization, for that matter – this version includes the alternate glyphs, see for example the descending forms for z and k, the spurless r, and the tailed t.

Albich must have been fond of this typographic style: he also used it for a catalog of his own drawings and paintings in 1987.

Source: www.etsy.com craftytransfers (edited). License: All Rights Reserved.

A sheet of 48pt Serif Gothic Black, issued by Letraset in 1980 as LG3603 in their Letragraphica range. Note the alternates for aefkrstzEL and the pile of combining diacritics at the bottom.

Source: www.modrykonik.sk Modrý koník (edited). License: All Rights Reserved.

Zelení ježci (1989) by Stanislav Peleška and Valerij Dmitrijevič Lobko, with illustrations by Jiřina Kaplická and František Severa

Source: aukro.cz knihyantikeu (edited). License: All Rights Reserved.

Zelený domov (1990) by Galina Tavlinova and Jan Dienstbier, with illustrations by Zdeněk Berger

Source: www.knihyuvrany.cz Knihy U Vrány (edited). License: All Rights Reserved.

Klenoty přírody (1990) by Vladimír Bouška and Vitalij Ippolitovič Sobolevskij, illustrated by Adolf Absolon 

Visual identity for STUDIO MARIE AIGNER X CAMBIO at Salone del Mobile Milano 2025. The assignment included exclusive print invitations, guerrilla marketing, and the claim.

To make the collaboration visible—with a focus on sustainability in the areas of acoustics, design, and fashion—selected guests were invited in advance to recreate Studio Marie Aigner’s icon: with Cactus Carl, visitors could immerse themselves in the 3D world of the interior design fair in Milan even before arriving.

On site, Cactus Carl could be followed throughout the city, and via a QR code on stickers, visitors could find information about where to locate the installation LOOKS GOOD, FEELS GOOD, SOUNDS GOOD.

The claim captures the shared values of interior designer Marie Aigner and the denim label Cambio.

This artist's book explores the diverse reference system of forms and materials, plants, animals and other subjects out of which Claudia Comte develops her biomorphic sculptures.

From Edition Patrick Frey:

Snow-clad marble sculptures of cactuses, pencil sketches of corals and renderings of leaf shapes seemingly suspended in mid-air, interspersed with grids of neon-colored sculptures and alarming newspaper headlines warning of the "ghastly" climate apocalypse that lies in store for us: this artist's book explores the diverse reference system of forms and materials, plants, animals and other subjects out of which Claudia Comte develops her biomorphic sculptures. While cactuses are well adapted to arid conditions, coral reefs, which form bio-diverse ecosystems at the bottom of the marine food chain, are wasting away due to the warming and acidification of the ocean. Leaves, on the other hand, represent photosynthesis, the energy-converting process that gives off oxygen. Comte's supernatural fusion of cactus, coral and leaf draws connections between aspects of the desert, ocean, and forest through various processes of material metamorphosis.

The book begins with an index of Comte's wooden sculptures, on which she confers first-name monikers, as if they were her familiars. Based on sketches, they are carved in wood or executed in marble with the aid of digital media. So marble, a petrified representation of the sea, meets wood, a place of storage for natural terrestrial processes and a constant source of oxygen.

The book’s focus is on our relationship to nature and the havoc we’ve wrought on our environment, which are the principal themes of the artist's practice. Prophecies of doom culled from newspaper articles sound the alarm about the looming climate emergency, for coral reefs aren't the only critically endangered biomes.

See also a previously published post about an exhibition with Claudia Comte’s work.

For Finnish rap artist Costi’s second Playmaker drop, the objective was to design a Western-and US-themed collection inspired by collegiate apparel, prominently featuring a distinctive collegiate-style with stretched Mesquite on a curve.

The collection includes two shirts in black and white and a crewneck with fitting track pants, all showcasing the same artwork in different styles. The track pants, as shown in the video, feature various college-type logos from up to down, inspired by several sport apparel from the NBA, incorporating the initials P and M for Playmaker. Additionally, the U-shaped horseshoe serves as a subtle reference to “University.”

For the logo on the track pants, we chose Vivaldi for its subtle and nostalgic feel. Its understated design ensures the logo blends in without standing out too much. In between the prints you can find a little quote – “There’s gold in the river” – written in the font used in his latest album cover for Coast to Costi, Celtic Garamond.

The “Sheriff” badge pairs Bernard Condensed with an unidentified slab serif.

Maystorm Studio was commissioned to develop a unique branding strategy for the 2023 Dam Safety Conference in Palm Springs. The project includes a full suite of digital media, event signage and print collateral, all unified under a color palette of cool blues and warm gradient tones that match the event's location and the organization’s existing brand. We used Noka as the bold main font, softened by a cursive accent font, Palm Canyon Drive, for a touch of vintage charm. The palette is completed by Ridley Grotesk. The cohesive and distinctive visual identity accurately represents the conference theme and objectives.

For her installation “Even Cacti Can’t Take the Heat”, Claudia Comte used Modern Gothic Poster. The installation is part of the exhibition The Liberation of Form. Barbara Hepworth – A Master of Abstraction in the Mirror of Modernism, held at the Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg from 2 April to 20 August, 2023.

About the exhibition, the Lehmbruck Museum writes:

The exhibition opens up new perspectives on Barbara Hepworth’s work and traces the connections to her contemporaries and her influence up to the present day. Works by artists such as Claudia Comte, Tacita Dean, Julian Charrière, Nevin Aladağ, Nezaket Ekici, and Laurenz Theinert update Hepworth's ideas and reinterpret her formal and aesthetic qualities.

Hidden Hills plays in the lands of the American West. It celebrates a mythical ritualistic dimension, the fading presence of ancient voices that whispered back from the ‘empty’ desert. Five years ago the photographer Cornelia Thonhauser started to explore the American West. During many road trips and long walks through the Sonoran Desert, she started to perceive the landscape as a container for her geographical and anthropological research. Taking images was an attempt to recover a somewhat buried spirituality.

Writer Hannah Bhuiya states in her text contribution:

Nature is a tough beauty fighting the long fight against the menace of concrete, tarmac and steel tower. The mountains in this desert landscape were set solid and strong in place by Gods who have been forgotten, even though most of the original Americans who guarded them are now buried in a graveyard of nationwide dimension. Their former presence is only emphasised in their haunting absence. The hidden hills are a monument to these many millions of missing persons.

Published by Blake & Vargas in 2021.

Big wood plank letters in the sky: Norton Slapstick, together with Flash Bold, on the cover of “an evening of Western hits”, released by Valiant Records around the early 1960s.

Originally drawn by S.E. Norton between the late 1940s and early 50s, Slapstick was digitized by Erik van Blokland in 2011.

[More info on Discogs]

Re+Union was the title of the 2020 edition of the Desert Daze music festival, held in April at Pappy and Harriet’s in Pioneer Town, Joshua Tree, California.

“Desert Daze” is set in Stop, and “Re+Union” is in Funky Rundkopf NF. Windsor is used for everything else, here in all-caps.

Variant with the lineup by days, printed in different colors

Tierra Sol is a plant and handmade pots company from North Carolina. The branding and graphic identity was designed by the Mexican creative studio Menta Picante. Canopée is used for the logotype (with one of its alternate A’s) and as the main branding typeface, assisted by Gatwick for labels and Basic Commercial for information.

They created a set of mini plant starter kits with special soil for each plant type, special handmade planters and detailed instructions on how to take care of your plant.

We developed a simple and nature focused identity system. For the inspiration, we took the simplicity of the name and how nature can be, clay, cactus, soil, water, and sky colors was the base for this color palette. The icon is an abstraction of a desert landscape which, in combination with the logotype, creates a balance between simple and classic. The complementary illustrations have this carefree look to complete the whole concept.

La Vibora (“The Snake”) is a collection of Mexican children’s songs for playing and dancing, released in the Liederblattreihe Mosaik series by FidulaFon, the label of Austrian-German publisher Fidula-Verlag in 1982. Directed and arranged by José Posada-Charrúa and transcribed by Hiltraud Reckmann, the record comes with vocals and additionally in an instrumental version.

Both cover designs prominently feature Stripes. The cover for the instrumental version is exclusively typographic. The multiline face designed by Tony Wenman for Letraset in 1973 is here used in a playful and unconstrained way. Some of the letters were linked up by the use of alternates. At the center is a snake composed from letterforms, punctuation glyphs, and other bits and pieces found on the dry transfer sheet, arranged on a winding baseline. The track names are set in caps from ITC Avant Garde Gothic Condensed. On the other cover version (below), the dance is over: The serpent has been caught by the eagle of Anahuac – this scene is depicted in the Mexican coat of arms.

Johannes Holzmeister (1923–2002), who founded the Fidula-Verlag in 1948, is credited with the design. A CD version of the album is still available from Fidula – and its cover still uses Stripes.

This use of Stripes may not be the most refined one, but it’s probably my favorite. This post goes out to Iván Moreno, type designer from Mexico, who recently released his Octothorpe, a massively expanded reinterpretation of Stripes. ¡Muchas gracias!

Detail showing the snaky swash extension, complete with a tongue which probably was trimmed with an X-Acto knife.

Note the rotated ampersand that here serves more as a separator than a connector.

Raymond Leroy Clark (1919–2000) was a yodeler and songwriter better known as Yodeling Slim Clark. This cover with an illustration by Roots and the title set in Beton licht (AKA Beton Open) is for a 1952 released by Plymouth Records. The song titles in the cactus are set in all-lowercase Tempo Heavy Condensed Italic. See also the cover of a version by Remington Records.

[More info on Discogs]

Label for a collaboration by Brooklyn-based brewery Other Half and Arizona WIlderness, designed by Small Stuff. India Pale Ale with lemon zest and prickly pear @ 6.8% ABV.

The rope typeface is Lariat, originally designed by Helmuth (or Helmith) Thoms in 1963 for Typefounders of Phoenix.

6 Saddle Songs of The West by Red River Dave & Jesse Rogers, Varsity Records/USA (1949?).
Cover by Steve Haas, with a French Antique that appears to be Playbill (1938), except for the G without beard. Playbill is a typeface made in Britain, at Stephenson Blake, but it was commonly used in the US, too: McGrew lists it as a popular import in his American Metal Typefaces of the Twentieth Century. The song titles are in Bernhard Gothic (ATF, 1929).

Popular Range Songs (Varsity 6907) is a variant of this record.

Sam Shepard’s True West was first performed at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco, where Shepard was the resident playwright. It had its world premiere there on July 10, 1980. First published in book form in 1981 by Samuel French, this is the jacket of Nelson Doubleday’s edition from 1982, designed by Laurene Femister-Muller with art direction from Jeanette Portelli.

The typeface is Photo-Lettering’s Fiorello Condensed, with a rotated ‘m’ repurposed as ‘w’, for maximum density. The hooked ‘t’ (minus the hyper-extended bar) as well as the weird ‘y’ are the original forms as shown in Photo-Lettering’s One Line Manual of Styles. These were replaced in the digital version sold by Monotype (and made at Compugraphic?).