Studio MPLS brings Roastar’s coffee tins to life with Coquette by Mark Simonson, adding a nostalgic yet vibrant touch to the packaging. Coquette’s unconnected, upright script delivers a playful, retro flair that pairs seamlessly with the bright color blocking and bold geometric patterns. Arrevederci JNL and Main Feature JNL, two quirky sans serifs by Jeff Levine, add to the retro vernacular feel of the design. The result is a packaging design that feels like a fresh take on classic pantry staples—timeless with just the right amount of charm.

Read more about the project on the Dieline blog.

In the mid-2000s, the city of The Hague started a project to enhance the numerous bicycle parking facilities with stylish houses and shelters for staff. In Scheveningen, artist/architect John Körmeling built a compact shelter, reminiscent of an American pre-war gas station. From the website of the commissioner Stroom:

Under a large awning, bicycles can be hung up for repair and an efficiently furnished office offers a wide view in all directions. On the eaves, flashing lights show ‘bicycle words’ such as pedal, fresh air and spoke.

The lights are mounted on all-caps Helvetica – not quite in keeping with the pre-war American romanticism of the architecture, but perhaps still accurate if one views the design as “generic”.

A 3D sketch model, from the artist’s website

Australia is a 2008 epic romantic historical drama film directed by Baz Luhrmann and starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman. The story is set between 1939 and 1942.

The title design brings together a number of fonts that echo this period: Radiant is a stressed sans serif designed by Robert H. Middleton for Ludlow between 1938 and 1941. Famous Label (Harold’s Fonts, 2001) is inspired by a piece of pen lettering found in J.B. Russell’s Alphabets: Ancient & Modern from 1945. The upright script is similar to Glenmoy (Stephenson Blake, 1932).

ITC Juanita (1996) is Luis Siquot’s “personal reinterpretation of some designs that originated in the 1930s and ’40s and were still popular during his childhood in the 1950s.” (U&lc Vol. 23 No. 3). It is paired with Black Tie (Scholtz Fonts, 2007), a loose reinterpretation of Bernhard Fashion (ATF, 1929).

The movie logo itself is probably custom and not based on a font. The sans-serif letterforms with pronounced contrast and abrupt changes from thick to thin recall Art Deco types like Ultra-Modern (Ludlow, 1928) or Modernique (ATF, 1928).

Debut single by Swedish pop rock group Roxette (Per Gessle and Marie Fredriksson), released in 1986.

Framestore:

Messages in the shadows: Framestore presents a twisting, turning title sequence for SS-GB, a major adaptation of Len Deighton’s 1978 alternate history novel, premiering on BBC One on Sunday 19th February.

The series is a complex thriller set in an SS-occupied London, in the early 1940s. Framestore’s William Bartlett worked alongside production company Sid Gentle Films and writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade to direct and craft the series’ title sequence, drawing on his own significant experience with the medium to stylishly reference the many motives and allegiances at play in the show’s narrative.

It is indeed an appealing title sequence — read more about its making on chaosgroup.com. For typophiles, there is one surprising flaw, though: It has to do with the simplified gotisch, or schaftstiefelgrotesk, that is shown as ominous Teutonic ghost image underneath the primary text layer in Futura caps. Of course blackletter is not meant to be used in all caps, but that’s the smaller issue here.

Source: vimeo.com Framestore © Sid Gentle Films/BBC. License: All Rights Reserved.

More importantly, one shouldn’t rely on untested free fonts. The font in use is the freebie Deutsch-Gotisch. In all of the family’s four styles, the letters ‘X’ and ‘Y’ were mistakenly swapped. Oops! Sam Riley is hence introduced as “SAM RILEX”, Maeve Dermody got changed to “MAEVE DERMODX”, and Jason Flemyng’s surname is spelled “FLEMXNG”. The blackletter shadows apparently play a purely illustrative role, and are not meant to be read, or proofread.

License: All Rights Reserved.

Deutsch-Gotisch is even more simplistic than other simplified gotischs like National or Tannenberg (the latter is used for the book cover of Harper’s 2009 edition of SS-GB), and some of its glyphs like ‘D’ or ‘g’ are downright clumsy. The font’s origin is not entirely clear. Virtually all of Dieter Steffmann’s freebies are based on historic sources. Sometimes credits are included, but not in this case. I don’t know of a metal typeface that could have served as a model here. Chances are Deutsch-Gotisch is instead derived from a lettering model (something like the exercise sheets by Hiero Rhode for Heintze & Blanckertz, but less well executed). That would also explain the unharmonized letterforms, e.g. the long “feet” on ‘A’ or ‘M’ which tend to cause spacing issues.

Source: vimeo.com Framestore © Sid Gentle Films/BBC. License: All Rights Reserved.

Hyphens like here in “Rhind-Tutt” were omitted in the blackletter layer — Deutsch-Gotisch has an obtrusive double hyphen that is too wide and heavy, and also positioned too high.

Source: vimeo.com Framestore © Sid Gentle Films/BBC. License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: https://www.behance.net. License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: https://www.behance.net. License: All Rights Reserved.

For the 2015 holidays, the Breitling watch company sent clients a box of chocolate. But they didn’t just slap their logo on some black cardboard and call it a day. Jeremia Adatte designed a colorful WWII-era tin with vintage pin-up and Art Deco influences. The retro art is meant to charm (Adatte chose a relatively tasteful representation of a genre that was inherently sexist), but it’s the thoughtful type choices and treatment that really drew my attention.

Source: https://www.behance.net. License: All Rights Reserved.

The exterior of the tin is set entirely in Mostra Nuova. Mark Simonson’s type family already includes an extensive range of alternates, but Adatte made some of his own lettering-inspired modifications to a few of the glyphs. For example, to establish a custom logotype for this fictional brand of chocolate, three holes are punched into Mostra Nuova’s ‘BR’, and a dot replaces the middle of the ‘E’. A 3-dimensional extrusion effect completes the look.

Source: https://www.behance.net. License: All Rights Reserved.

To establish a custom logotype for this fictional brand of chocolate, three holes are punched into Mostra Nuova’s ‘BR’, and a dot replaces the middle of the ‘E’. A 3-dimensional extrusion effect completes the look.

Source: https://www.behance.net. License: All Rights Reserved.

The sticker on the inside of the box lid is another fairly convincing throwback design using type by comic book lettering experts Comicraft (Rocketship from Infinity), and a typical advertising script (Leader) which comes directly from the archives of Filmotype, a pioneering phototype company founded in the 1950s.

These type genres are perhaps a decade too late in comparison to the Deco-style exterior of the tin. Leader is a very nicely drawn and authentic freehand script, but it’s more mid-’50s than ’40s. Still, it’s close enough, and by the time Breitling’s recipients saw this sticker they were certainly too busy diving into the chocolates to notice or care.

Overall, it’s a warm and lovingly crafted promotional gift celebrating Breitling’s roots in aviation (the company built onboard chronographs for Royal Air Force cockpits). I wouldn’t complain if it landed in my mailbox.

Source: https://www.behance.net. License: All Rights Reserved.

Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1989. Cover illustration by Paul Hogarth.

From a series of Season's Greetings cards by Die Sellerie.

The Creative Action Network and National Parks Conservation Association have partnered to revive the legacy of the New Deal art projects, inviting artists and designers from all 50 states to create a new collection of See America posters celebrating our shared natural landmarks and treasured sites.

Luis Prado is an Argentine-born graphic designer (now living in Olympia, WA) and the typeface, Borgstrand, is Swedish, but that’s ok; America is a nation of immigrants. Plus, Borgstrand has a lot in common with the gas-pipe style of lettering found on the WPA posters that inspired the See America project.

Re:publica is an annual conference that deals with web-related topics like blogging, social media, digital society, and web politics. On the occasion of re:publica 13 which opened its doors in Berlin today, Wortfeld has published a series of historic conference posters, claiming that they were discovered “in the attic of the state archives in Berlin-Dahlem”. The posters purportedly prove that the roots of re:publica go back not only to 2007, but actually a full hundred years, when “engineers, artists, painters and musicians first met in a Berlin machine factory in 1913, under the wary eyes of the Prussian secret police”.

Although there are a couple of details that challenge their authenticity, the posters do a remarkable job at emulating the various historic styles of graphic design. It’s obvious that the designer(s) had lots of fun with these.
The images were published under a CC-by license.

While all genres here are more or less historically accurate, this spoof is easily detectable: The Art Nouveau letterforms by Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868–1928) were not made into a typeface before 1996, when Phil Grimshaw digitized them as ITC Rennie Mackintosh. Also, such a combination of Jugendstil and blackletter was rather unusual.

Bonus points for correctly using the two forms of ‘s’ in ‘Diskuſſion’! (However, ‘Maſchinenfabrik’ would have needed a ‘long s’, too.)

Berthold Block is a very plausible choice for a German interwar poster. The condensed weights were not released before 1920, though.

Constructivist typography similar to the works of El Lissitzky or Jan Tschichold, featuring the rarely seen P22 DeStijl Stencil. Erbar-Grotesk schmalhalbfett was not available before 1929, but this still feels pretty correct.

The 1928 poster is a nod to Kurt Schwitters and his MERZ collages, with a mix of Wilhelm Klingspor Gotisch, Akzidenz-Grotesk, some more Rennie Mackintosh, Block, Futura – and Adobe Garamond (1989).

This one is great! Every design that uses Reporter is great. The secondary typeface is Alternate Gothic No. 2.

Roger Excoffon’s Banco (1951) and Hermann Zapf’s Optima Bold (1968) – almost. Fun fact: A specimen for Optima showed an airplane, too.

This poster feels the least authentic to me. Yes, Helvetica was already released in 1958 (at least the regular weight). Yes, multi-color photographic reproduction was possible, theoretically. The devil is in the details: the spacing – word spaces in particular – is way too wide for a pre-digital poster design.

The 1963 edition is more credible: an economical one-color print with a coarse half tone image.

Helvetica again, now paired with Times Extra Bold – looks quite authentic. But would they really have used the term ‘Westberlin’?

ITC Lubalin Graph was released in 1974, but apart from that, this is another good one. ITC Avant Garde Gothic really shines with that rainbow. Minor quibble: It looks more like a paperback cover than a poster.

Futura Extra Bold Condensed, tightly spaced and with heavy underlines – spot on for Germany anno 1978, cf. this poster by Klaus Staeck.

More Futura Condensed, now in several weights and all caps. Complete with a reference to the “Btx-Leitseite” – hilarious!

The 1988 poster features various styles of ITC Franklin Gothic. With the contrasty color blocks and the pipes as date separators, it successfully establishes a late eighties/early nineties atmosphere.

Props for using the actual Lucky Strike typeface here: This is Concorde, not Times New Roman.

Emigre’s Mrs Eaves indeed was an ubiquitous typeface in the late 1990s. Here it is paired with Akzidenz-Grotesk.

Last but not least, this is FF DIN Alternate (featuring the narrow C), with roughened contours.

Historically convincing use of Neutraface 2. A little overzealous with the manual ‘AY’ kerning in “MURRAY”.

According to Michael Harvey’s description of his typeface, “Tisdall Script is based upon the brush-drawn script lettering of Hans Tisdall, who was the designer of many distinctive lettered book jackets for [London-based publisher] Jonathan Cape in the 1950s.” An appropriate selection for a book about British mid-century modern textile design. But there is and even stronger historical connection here: Tisdall was part of the Edinburgh Weavers, designing many textiles for the label and also the logo in the very style on which Harvey’s font is based.

A late ’90s poster for the Tractor Tavern, a Seattle music club. Art Chantry mimicked a 1947 newspaper reporting on the infamous Roswell UFO crash. Chantry chose the typefaces “with my gut, not with my head”. Like the flying object that hit New Mexico, the narrow headline gothic is currently unidentified.

This and other classic Chantry posters are for sale directly from the artist.

Neutraface and Century Old Style strike the perfect tone for this book of domestic tips that hearken back to the “simpler times” of early to mid 20th century America. ITC Century is used for large type, like chapter heads, presumably because it has a lighter touch, but it feels newer and thus slightly out of place.

The graphic artifacts of the Art Deco era, from WPA posters to the ephemera of 1939 World’s Fair, have long been a source of personal inspiration. Despite countless riffs and rip-offs by designers over the years, the results still grab my attention when this visual vocabulary is deployed in a stylish and appropriate way. And if a charmingly idiosyncratic sans serif I don’t recognize is involved? Even better.

Such is the case with designer Connie Gabbert’s covers for 5 e-book editions of work by Michael Chabon. The author’s “nostalgia for bygone modes of storytelling,” as the series’ publisher puts it, make the vintage approach an apt choice.* Chabon’s books have had typographically driven covers before, but these stylishly weathered designs provide a striking and cohesive identity for this collection from Open Road Media.

Distinguished by its unusual ‘N’ and ‘M’, Anorak was originally released as BF PXL-Compressor in 1999. Oliver Funke and Guido Schneider revised the family in 2005 and renamed it. See more on MyFonts.

It’s a credit to the designer that the ubiquitous Gotham, used to set the book’s title, manages to look fresh and at home here, although this is less of a surprise when you consider Hoefler & Frere-Jones’ description of their source material: “the no-nonsense lettering of the American vernacular.” This straightforward presentation of the titles keeps the covers from slipping into pastiche.

Interestingly, the initial design for the covers took a different tack: “I originally fleshed out the whole series with hand-lettering. However, in the end, Anorak won, and I’m very glad it did,” says Gabbert.

And as someone who enjoys a fresh take on an established genre, I am too.

*According to Wikipedia, a character in Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay breaks into the abandoned site of the World’s Fair and has “a significant sexual experience.”