Alphabotanica is an exhibition that blends the Latin alphabet with botany through a series of 26 illustrated drop caps. Illustrator Asile imagined this colorful primer as a botanical abecedary, where each letter corresponds to a specific plant whose name begins with that initial. Every letter gives bloom to a vibrant composition, integrating characters immersed within this generous and lush flora.

The letterforms are based on the Lichen typeface, designed by me, Anton Moglia. This design is inspired by hand-painted lettering and strives to remain faithful to the expressiveness of the gesture and the rhythm of writing. To further the connection between typography, illustration, and botany, I have calligraphed the name of each plant beneath its corresponding letter, acting as a subtitled accompaniment to the artwork.

The exhibition was first presented from February 7 to 28, 2025, at Atome in Annecy. A new edition of the show was later organized from February 27 to April 25, 2026, at La Cordée in Annecy.

This anthology of Hispanic American modernist prose was edited by Roberto Yahni and published by Alianza Editorial in 1974.

Cover designer Daniel Gil used Roberta III Initials for the typography. This style of Robert Trogman’s Roberta family is virtually identical to Staudel Xenotype J (1962), but unlike Photo-Lettering’s typeface, it doesn’t have a lowercase. A dry transfer version of Roberta III was available from Mecanorma by 1973.

The chosen cover art is Schwäne in der Abendsonne (“Swans in the Evening Light”), a lithographic design for a stain glass window made by German artist Hans Christiansen (1866–1945) and reproduced in number 33 of Jugend from 1898. As such, it’s a stylistic match for the Art Nouveau-inspired typeface. I fail to see a connection to Hispanic American literature, though.

Detail

Ad in LIFE magazine, October 11, 1968

New imaginative styles by Peter Max. Three wild designs to choose from. Repeat alarm wakes you – lets you snooze – then awakes you again. Daring and decorative – great gift.

Every time I come across a Peter Max work, whether it’s a pair of jeans (ad) or the cover of his own magazine—my eyes literally overdose on all the colors and swirling forms. Peter Max is not just another “hippie” artist, rather he’s a kind, caring and loving person who’s influenced a whole generation of artists and people abroad. Even if his name has never crossed your eyes or ears, you’ve probably seen his art somewhere. So many others around the world admire Max and his artwork, although these days it absolutely breaks my heart to see how others treat him in his current state.

Let's move on to something lighter… literally!

From 1968 to 1970, Peter Max was commissioned to design clocks and a poster for General Electric. The poster, advertising some absolutely wonderful wall clocks is set in Millstein Orientale for “New from General Electric” and below, with some Helvetica for the tinier text.

Moving on to the 1970 Snooz-Alarm clocks advertisement which shows Norton Futuramic, a Photo-Lettering face that was issued in the 1940s, paired with Obese E, a Psychedelitype (link two) released in 1967—note that this wouldn’t be the first or last time Obese would be used in Max’s work. Jefferson Aeroplane appears for the Symmetry clock, and Davison Arabesque for the Spectrum clock. Aura is just Futuramic, repeated, and below the three is presented in Futura for the price and bold words, Bodoni for the quoted text.

The actual Symmetry clock uses an illustrated form of Obese, Spectrum uses Art Nouveau-esque numericals not unlike Benguiat Laurent, and the Aura clock uses custom numerals not specific to any phototype… but still looks rad anyway!

Ad in Courier Journal, March 22, 1970

Symmetry

Spectrum

Aura (black version)

Flower Girl

An illustrated French language Belle Époque book from 1903, on plants and their ornamental use, featuring an unusually small size of Grasset used to set the entire body along with hand drawn letters for the titles and captions.

A digitized copy of the full book is available at the Internet Archive.

Soho Parish C of E Primary School is a school in London’s Soho district, and the last of its kind. Wonderhood Studios redesigned their identity, using Forevs. The logo features OH no Type Co.’s glyphic display typeface with several of its alternates, including the wide S, the A with top bar, and the Art Nouveau forms for E H M P R. The OO ligature appears to be custom. The slogan “There's only on Soho School” is set in Forevs Italic.

The closed yet living museum: how does the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest survive the closure of its main building? This special publication testifies to the fact that although Ödön Lechner’s art nouveau palace on Üllői út was closed in 2017 due to resconstruction, the museum that was moved out of it is alive and trying to be well. In the 160-page bookazine titled Iparkodunk (“Craftivity”), reports, interviews and colourful stories tell the reader how the closed museum is kept on the surface and how the “Iparművészeti” can still be the art nouveau world heritage center in the future after the renovation.

From the outside the book is simple, gray, slightly industrial. At first glance it looks mournful with its black edge painting. Inside, however, it is vivid full of big pictures and red thread. This symbolizes that the institute, which is in a undeserving and nowadays ungrateful situation, hides a wonderful and unparalleled collection of applied arts.

On the gray cover and in the colourful inner title page a detail of Walter Crane’s “The Peacock Garden” wallpaper can be seen – it decorates one of the walls of the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts, in the directorate’s wing of the ground-floor corridor.

With the “Hagen Impulse,” patron Karl Ernst Osthaus initiated groundbreaking contributions to the reform movements of the early 20th century. The manifold activities, especially the experiments and models of socially effective architecture also influenced the young Walter Gropius, who had a close friendship with Osthaus. Not all aspects of the impulse were continued in the later Bauhaus.

Before the Bauhaus: Osthaus deals with the cultural implementation of modern architecture by Karl Ernst Osthaus, especially his programmatic use of photographs. Osthaus used them to make his projects internationally known and at the same time aimed at a new perception of architecture.

The design quotes in format, layout and material various publications from the time of Karl Ernst Osthaus. It combines features from the first catalogues of the Folkwang Collection and the monograph by architect Henry van de Velde. The result is a contemporary design with clear historical references.

The typefaces used are as much a historical quotation as they are a contemporary interpretation. Behrens-Antiqua is a design by Peter Behrens, published in 1907 by the Gebrüder Klingspor type foundry, which was already used in the publications of Karl Ernst Osthaus. It is used in Dan X. Solo’s digital version, alongside FF Bau by Christian Schwartz, whose design follows a grotesk by Schelter & Giesecke, which was used significantly in the visual communication of the Bauhaus in the 1920s. Ludovic Balland’s Stanley is used for running text.

The self-titled debut album of British-based pop band Fox was released on GTO Records in 1975. From Discogs:

After writing and producing for other artists in the sixties, Kenny Young (he penned Under The Boardwalk for The Drifters) put together Fox in the early seventies, recruiting Australian singer Susan Traynor from Wooden Horse (she renamed herself Noosha Fox for this project) and Irish singer Herbie Armstrong to record the band’s first album in 1975, which also featured guest vocals by Queen's Roger Taylor.

The album design by Sue Heaven features lettering integrated with an Art Nouveau-like frame on the front cover. Text on the back cover is set in Arnold Böcklin.

[More info on Discogs]

A 2002 reissue by Cherry Red combines Davida and Helvetica Condensed for the back of the CD cover.

I came across the title page of an edition of Nietzsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra. I stared at it for a few moments and, along with the undeniable Art Nouveau tone, what caught my eye was the typeface used, which I already knew, but couldn’t remember the name of, but which was all too obvious: Zarathustra, drawn by Georges Lemmen.

I then discovered that the typeface was in fact named after the book project for which it was commissioned.

In the copy I found digitized, there is the following colophon on the summary page at the end of the book (see image no. 6; translated from the German):

The typeface for this edition of “Zarathustra” was drawn by G. Lemmen in 1900 and cut with the help of Harry Graf Kessler. Henry van de Velde designed the title, pre-title, ornaments and binding and supervised the printing. 530 copies were printed in the Offizin W. Drugulin in leipzig, of which numbers 1–100 were bound in leather and numbers 101–530 in vellum. — This is number 471

It’s not explicitly written, but it’s quite likely that Van der Velde was also responsible for the design of the book’s interior, since he designed the title page. Moreover, we must admit that only a painter, a designer with a taste for ornament, would have decided to highlight the internal chapters in this way (see image no. 4).

The page has a format close to that of the golden ratio; the text box, however, looks like an architectural column: narrow and with capitals at the top, notably a mark of the artist’s architectural conception and which contributes, with the golden ornaments, to an expression of the work’s vernacular tone. If the rigorous master Tschichold were to leaf through the book, he would say there were numerous typographical errors. But I think it’s a case of typography, not taking a back seat, but becoming more flexible in favor of the idea of “total art” in the object. Just as a chair can be both expression and function.

Here's a short article about the artist, from britannica.com:

Henry van de Velde (born April 3, 1863, Antwerp, Belg.—died Oct. 25, 1957, Zürich, Switz.) was a Belgian architect and teacher who ranks with his compatriot Victor Horta as an originator of the Art Nouveau style, characterized by long sinuous lines derived from naturalistic forms. By designing furniture and interiors for the Paris art galleries of Samuel Bing in 1896, van de Velde was responsible for bringing the Art Nouveau style to Paris. Van de Velde’s most vital contributions to modern design were made as a teacher in Germany, where his name became known through the exhibition of furnished interiors at Dresden in 1897. In 1902 he went to Weimar as artistic adviser to the grand duke of Saxe-Weimar. There, influenced by the philosophy of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement, he reorganized the Kunstgewerbeschule (Arts-and-Crafts School) and the academy of fine art and thus laid the foundations for Walter Gropius’ amalgamation of the two bodies into the Bauhaus in 1919. Like the progressive German designers at the time, van de Velde was connected with the Deutscher Werkbund, and he designed the theatre for the Werkbund Exposition in Cologne in 1914. Despite official appointments in Belgium, van de Velde after 1918 made no further contributions to architecture or design. A valuable extract from his Memoirs (1891–1901) was published in the Architectural Review, 112:143–148 (September 1952).

Frères comme ça was designed by Annegret Beier while at Lubalin, Smith, Carnase Inc. This book is subtitled “36 photographies de Marcel Imsand, 10 histoires d’Emile Gardaz.” It is CRV no. 75 (Cahiers de la Renaissance Vaudoise), printed in Lausanne, Switzerland. Beier used Eckmann for the book cover and chapter heads.

Top Billing is a top-heavy all-caps slab serif made at Photo-Lettering sometime in or before 1965. No designer is credited, but it was probably drawn either by Ed Benguiat himself, or under his guidance. Top Billing comes in two styles, a Spurred one (which we use for the sample), and a plain one.

The latter can be seen on the cover of Incense and Peppermints, the debut album by psychedelic rock band Strawberry Alarm Clock, released in 1967 on UNI Records, including the titular hit single. The designers elongated the bottom parts of selected letterforms, counterbalancing their top-heaviness.

The cover design is credited to Lazarus (2)/LePrevost and features a photo of the six band members taken by Ed Caraeff (who was 17 at the time!), assisted by Rodney Bingenheimer. The clothing is by Sat Purush, an East Indian boutique clothing shop in Westwood, California, specializing in handmade kurtas. The portrait is framed by a striped pattern and topped by Art Noveau-like flourishes, including the strawberries from the band’s name.

[More info on Discogs]

Text on the back cover is set in Futura.

Detail

For the 50th anniversary of the album’s release in 2017, the band reenacted the iconic photo, again with clothing by fashion designer Cathy Scarms of Sat Purush. The photo was taken by Robert Jacobs.

From left to right: Howie Anderson who replaced Ed King, original drummer Gene Gunnels, original drummer and lead vocalist Randy Seol, original bassist George Bunnell, original keyboardist Mark Weitz, and honorary original member Steve Bartek. You can watch a video about the photo shoot on YouTube.

Diego Ballester is an Argentine designer specialized on wine labels. When vintner Eduardo Soler and friends launched a new series of wines made from Mediterranean grape varieties, he let the name determine the design direction. Ver Sacrum is Latin for “sacred spring”, but better known as the title of the magazine published by the Vienna Secession. The three typefaces Ballester selected were all popular in the Art Nouveau era: Desdemona is a version of Quaint Roman from 1886, Eccentric was first cast in 1881, and Eckmann is the quintessential German Jugendstil typeface, issued in 1900.

From U&lc magazine, volume 6, number 1, March 1979:

Tony DiSpigna fits right into the mold of Herb Lubalin Associates. As you can see, his is a dedication to fine typography more as a decorative medium than an illustrative one. […] The Lenali poster was designed for Tony’s cousin in Naples, Italy, who owns a beauty boutique. It effectively combines ITC Bernase with ITC Serif Gothic. Note particularly the excellent spacing, kerning and use of ligatures in the ITC Serif Gothic.

Upper and Lower Case, or U&lc, was “the international journal of typographics published by International Typeface Corporation”. The poster was reproduced as part of a feature inviting designers to submit their best typographic works done using ITC typefaces. To kick off this series, the editorial team “asked some of the designers associated with ITC to put their best ITC faces forward.”

Corso Umberto I was the name of the main shopping street in Di Spigna’s hometown of Forio d’Ischia. Today it’s called Corso Francesco Regine.

In the years before the outbreak of World War 1 “motoring” started to be one of the popular pastimes of the ‘well-off’ and upper classes. This can be seen in this series of motoring guides produced by the Cheltenham based publishers E J Burrow & Co Ltd in conjunction with the Royal Automobile Club and this, the Scottish volume, in connection with the Scottish Motoring Club. The various volumes give details of routes and destinations, including maps, and are peppered with adverts for motoring services to be found on the way – important then in the early days of motoring when to be able to find a mechanic or petrol supplies was vital – as well as for hotels and for ‘goods’ useful for motorists; these include accessories and clothing suitable for motoring. The guides are written by Charles G Harper who was a well known travel writer.

E J Burrow’s became a prolific publisher of guides and handbooks, often “official” in that they were produced in conjuction with local authorities or organisations. This is interesting in that it notes amongst their addresses Bradford as the fact their London Agent was Percy Lund, Humphries & Co Ltd. I suspect this small format book may have been printed at Lund Humphries ‘County Press’ and had not previously been aware of some link between the two companies.

In the ad shown above, Windsor Condensed is set on a curve, with the initial letter inserted from regular-wide Windsor. Other typefaces used include Cheltenham (sold by Caslon as Cheltenham Old Style), Jenson Old Style (sold by Stephenson Blake as Italian Old Style), and a bold Grotesque.

Can there be any more iconic name in connection with Glasgow’s Tea Rooms than that of Cranston’s? It even gets a mention in the 1938 GPO documentary Night Mail. This advert however relates not to Miss Catherine – or Kate – Cranston whose Tea Rooms designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh are the stuff of legend, but the chain founded and owned by her brother Stuart Cranston. Both siblings followed their father’s footsteps into the business of tea and tea rooms. Stuart died in 1921, his sister despite having given her tea rooms up in 1918, outliving him until she died in 1934 leaving a substantial estate to ‘the poor of Glasgow’.

The ad shown below likewise uses Windsor, complemented by De Vinne, also in two widths, and an Old Style.

The Scottish Motor Traction Co Ltd, better recalled as ‘the SMT’, was formed in 1905 and although it was around early motor cars that the business was based, they soon began to operate motor buses. Thanks to railway investment in the late 1920s, the company became the dominant force in the Scottish bus industry, owning other concerns notably W Alexander’s. Nationalised in 1948, and forming the basis of the later Scottish Bus Group. The non-bus and coach interests that I think had been formed into a separate subsidiary as SMT Sales & Service Ltd., selling and repairing motor cars, before WW1, was retained in private ownership and continued in existance until 1991.

These premises in Fountainbridge, Edinburgh, were suitably aimed at the sort of clientele who could afford motoring in pre-WW1 days with Ladies and Gentlemens lounges – as well as skilled engineers and 24-hour service.

The brief was to design an identity for a major exhibition at the V&A Museum in London, entitled Art Nouveau 1890–1914. The visual language had to reflect Art Nouveau’s aesthetic and the exhibition’s content and academic aims, and provide a distinctive visual language to appeal to a broad range of potential visitors.

Among those featured in the exhibition were artists and designers such as Beardsley, Gauguin, Gallé, Gaudi, Mackintosh, Mucha, Munch, Tiffany, and Toulouse-Lautrec.

I devised a design concept based on movement, which is characteristic of Art Nouveau forms combined with the natural and mystical aspects of the movement. The line elements evoke the sensual and curvaceous lines often referred to as the whiplash in Art Nouveau design. The light created by the dragonfly wing in motion creates an atmosphere of divine light illuminating the subject.

The typefaces selected were ITC Benguiat and Gill Sans; Benguiat is based on typefaces of the Art Nouveau period but is not a revivalist style and manages to impart an organic and characterful aesthetic to the design yet has a crispness that provides a timeless presentation of the Art Nouveau epoch. Gill Sans was chosen for its legibility for information and text usage. This humanist sans-serif typeface contrasts with the more decorative aspects of Benguiat while still presenting warm type forms.

The shown images were generated from my original V&A artwork files and applied to contemporary mock-ups.

Milanese-born restaurateur Edoardo Mantelli’s latest project was driven by his infatuation with the Viennese-style cafes of fin-de-siècle Milan, where heated exchanges about the origins of the Negroni were cooled by a refreshing Spritz (Campari, per favore, not Aperol). Our branding for Saraghina Caffè is a loving tribute to the grace and grandeur of these institutions, with their rich heritage and passionate hand-gesture conversations.

Within the art nouveau landscape, we looked to early 1900s illustrators like Alphonse Mucha and Secessionist artists such as Koloman Moser. The creative process was loose and adaptive. Furniture, stained glass, and sculpture inspired the border treatments, and more graphic historical posters from some of the greats of their time (Leopoldo Metlicovitz, Adolfo Hohenstein and Giovanni Maria Matalon) informed the spirit of the custom, single-weight display typeface.

Website detail featuring Jacopo Mediaeval NF for text, with Plaak 3 Pradel and Sweet Gothic for headings and navigation

Type specimen for the custom Saraghina

Menu featuring Polliwog for headings and Roslindale Text for text.

Shop sign in the Saraghina typeface, with Sweet Gothic for the address

The visual identity and graphic design for the Musée de l'École de Nancy, the Art Nouveau museum in France, was designed by Lab.Leblond.Tytgat in 2018. Their custom typeface, Nouveau, was designed by Jérôme Knebusch with Philippe Tytgat. The typeface family was published as a retail typeface in six styles (Nouveau Crocus, Dahlia, Gingko, Nenuphar, Rose, Thistle) and five weights (Hair to Medium) by Poem in May 2022. A variable font assembles all styles in one. In the communication of the museum, Nouveau is paired with Marat by Ludwig Übele.

As a scribal typeface with vestiges of blackletter (see for example H and N with their minuscule construction), Rustikalis doesn’t really lend itself to being used in capitals. And yet in five out of the nine examples documented on Fonts In Use so far, the designers specified all caps. So did Eastern Graphics of Binghamton when they provided the design for Cornell & Ithaca in Postcards ... a history with recollections by Harvey N. Roehl. Chances are this was done to further dial up Rustikalis’s exoticness or, in this case, its quaint look. The chosen style is the light and wide Rustikalis Modernized Gothic, here used with an enlarged specimen of its big-headed ampersand.

Title page with two postcards as frontispiece

A letterhead for Jan Cingroš, a masonry plant in Plzeň, founded in 1866 by Czech stonemason and businessman, Jan Cingroš (1841–1906). It was the largest plant of its kind in Austria–Hungary, dealing primarily with the construction of tombstones and monuments. Production continued until World War II.

This little piece of ephemera presents a beautiful use of the typefaces Quaint, and its outline version, Quaint Open, both cut by John F. Cumming around 1886, and cast by Dickinson (and later by the American Type Foundry).

I think the C and G are quite noteworthy for their angular direction in those curves, but the G catches my eye in particular, since its high waist and consequently long stem reminds me of De Vinne. I thought this was merely a personal association, but then I found out that he also designed (or cut) Howland (1892), which was published as a companion series to De Vinne (c. 1892). So there is some connection, although Howland doesn’t actually feature that characteristic high-waisted G. I also want to point out that the S somehow reminded me of Skjald (1890). And guess who was responsible for that?

Design and typesetting: Ant. Kalaše
Printing and lithography: Stiller a Erben v Plzni

The letterhead can be found in Typografia Vol. 15, published in 1903.

Interesting to note is that the high-waisted version of R with its horizontal bowl is used in ‘Cingroš’ alongside the more Art Nouveau-inspired P, with its angular bowl. Yet a variant of R with that same angular bowl also exists (which you can see in the smaller text of the tagline).

A sample of 18-point Quaint, showing both versions of B and R.

The Art Nouveau border is constructed from elements of a metal ornament type that looks like it could be part of Patrick (serie 109), sold by the Klinkhardt foundry in Leipzig.

Crayonette (or probably Letraset’s version named Columbian Italic) with raised caps for Wintergarden. This album of jazz funk library music was recorded by Günter Platzek (1930–1990), keyboard player and long-time member of the James Last Orchestra (1965–1990) as well as of the NDR big band, the Alfred Hause tango orchestra, and the Bert Kaempfert orchestra. Released by Selected Sound ‎as ST 120 in 1979.

From What Is Wrong With Grooving:

The cover looks obscure, rather cheesy but this is actually one of my favourite Selected Sound Library Music albums. Highly recommended is the funky and slightly Brazilian influenced “Midnight Train”. Dope Crime-Funk. Catchy and dance floor friendly Library Grooves with 122 BPM what makes the “For Dancing” label a very good fit.

[More info on Discogs]