Headlines are shown in all-caps Latin Bold. Some of the lines including “Travel wise – always travel by coach” are drawn by hand, though: zoom in to see small differences between repeating letters. The italic red caps appear to be from Miller & Richard’s Grotesque No. 4.

A rather fine and complex folding map giving details of the many express motor coach routes operated in England and Wales by the ‘principal’ bus and coach companies, a list of which appears at the base of the map. The folder gives information as to express services, coach holidays, chartering, sightseeing and coach-air services and is illustrated by images of suitably express coaches and happy passengers. The folder was issued at a time of great popularity for both express coach services and coach holidays – post-war years that still saw relatively low car ownership but with increasing wages and disposable income and before the onset of cheaper overseas holidays.

Amongst the photos I can make out a BMMO Midland Red motorway coach, passing what looks like a Bristol, and various vehicles that look to be both East Kent and Maidstone & District. The list of companies, organised geographically, contain some well known and often much missed names. Oddly the ‘Scottish’ connection points potential passengers to the Scottish Tourist Board and not the Scottish Bus Group.

The rather stylish graphics and map are signed “Reitz” who is an artist/designer I can find little about although they did similar maps and publicity for British Rail at the time.

Northern section of the map. Labels use Futura Condensed.

Southern section of the map. The list of principle bus and coach companies of Britain is set in two weight from Monotype Grotesque.

Plantin is used for the body text.

Sign at Birmingham New Street, photograph taken 20 September 2024

In 1994, Britain’s conservative government started dismantling the country’s railway network as part of their privatization policy. A new company called Railtrack was given the task of maintaining the railway infrastructure – the tracks, signals, bridges, the major stations – while other new companies (the ‘train operating companies’) were created to provide services on various routes and to pay money to Railtrack for the right to access the tracks.

These new companies were able to move away from the classical British Railway branding – that famous Rail Alphabet typeface in stark black and white established in the 1960s. For example, Great Western Railway Company adopted Adrian Frutiger’s Glypha typeface.

The brand design for Railtrack was developed by leading agency Citigate Lloyd Northover (founded by John Lloyd and Jim Northover). Northover writes:

When commissioned to update the UK rail system signs (in part for digital application), we proposed alignment with the continental use of blue grounds with white lettering in preference to the earlier black on white, thus making the words and pictograms stand out more clearly. The new type design, which we called Brunel, saved space and improved clarity. Brunel was carefully realised by typographers David Quay and Freda Sack from our design brief, with different weights to accommodate illuminated and non-illuminated messages. The typeface was envisaged for use across the UK rail network, but as individual rail operators adopted their own designs Brunel became restricted to the major stations managed by Network Rail.

Freda Sack, David Quay’s partner in The Foundry, talks about the development of Brunel:

We seemed to get a run of transport projects. Working with consultancy Citigate Lloyd Northover we developed the typeface Brunel (1998). It was commissioned for use in mainline UK railway stations, and was a favorite project for me, again because of the strict parameters. For that project, though, we were, on the whole, designing for much larger use on signage, including some of the first plasma screens. It was a great brief. The typeface had to look English – although of course it is used all over the UK – and had to have authority. In addition to its basic information/directional functions, the type was also required to bring some visual consistency to station environments, countering the confusion of the prevalence of visual identities adopted by the various new train operating companies then being formed, and the visual noise of station concourse shopping.

David Quay comments:

Railtrack too was a challenge, but a pleasant one [...] that I named the font ‘Brunel’ after my childhood hero, Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

The Brunel font was never released commercially. If it had been, the name might have been reconsidered, because there was already a typeface called Brunel – an English Modern serif typeface designed by Paul Barnes in 1995 with later input from Christian Schwartz in 2005. Schwartz describes their Brunel as “an anthology of the late eighteenth and nineteenth century English foundries.”

At some point Railtrack's Brunel font became known as NR Brunel (NR for Network Rail). This was because, after a string of disasters and poor decisions, the Railtrack company had been renationalized and renamed Network Rail in 2002.

Thanks to a post on Daniel Wright’s excellent The Beauty of Transport blog, we can follow the results of a freedom of information (FOI) request which leads us eventually to a copy of Network Rail’s design manual: Design Guidelines 2010, developed by Steer Davies Gleave. This shows specimens for NR Brunel Regular and NR Brunel Bold and asserts that:

This is the only font allowed on signs.

This font is an evolution of the ‘Brunel’ typeface, previously in use and designed specifically for wayfinding purposes.

(This FOI response also provides a copy of the Brunel font, now named as NewBrunel and dated 2010, in TTF format. I expect that including this was an administrative oversight on the part of the FOI responder.)

Originally the tops of the ascenders of letters such as b, d, h, k, and l were flat, but at some point (perhaps also in 2002, or as part of the ‘evolution’) they were given sloping tops. Also, the 1 digit was given a base to stand on.

Usage of NR Brunel has been steadily increasing across the network since it was introduced nearly thirty years ago, with new and refurbished stations boldly going full Brunel. It might even have become the new official standard font for all UK railways if the Chris Green/Peter Hall ‘Better Rail Stations’ report had been implemented in full. The advice on page 30 of this 2009 report was:

Station Signage

To ensure network consistency and reduced franchise costs, all signage should be in standard ‘Brunel’ script with white letters on a dark blue background. Thereafter, name signs should not be changed when train company ownership changes.

However, the newly-nationalized British Railways has decided that in the future all railway signage should use Rail Alphabet 2:

Great British Railways will introduce Rail Alphabet 2 across the rail network, replacing the many different fonts used on railway signage.

So the Rail Alphabet will gradually replace the Brunel font which had originally ousted it back in 1998. But it’s likely to be many years before the final traces of Brunel disappear from our stations. Until then, you can happily spend a few minutes contemplating the convoluted history of the UK rail network – both as political football and as a succession of design choices – while you’re waiting for your train.

Photograph taken at Kings Cross 29 May 2025; type in both white on dark blue and black on white

Photograph taken at Paddington Station on 29 May 2025. Colour matching is hard…

Photograph taken at Paddington Station on 29 May 2025

Photograph taken at Waterloo Station on 29 May 2025; the new standard Rail Alphabet 2 is used for the big signs in the background, while the previous standard Brunel is still used for other signage (at the time of writing)

Photograph taken at Waterloo Station on 29 May 2025

Photograph taken at Cranbrook Station on 2 June 2025; this station was built in 2015, but the version of the Brunel font used here has the flat-topped ascenders

Network Rail’s design manual Managed Stations Wayfinding, developed by Steer Davies Gleave, 2010

My first project of Year 3 at Nottingham Trent University explores perceptions of the Union Jack and St George’s Cross, a polarising topic in recent discourse. The statements were collected and curated by myself from an online survey and do not reflect my personal beliefs. The photos were taken in various towns across the Midlands. I really enjoyed working on an editorial project.

Printed A3 with a fabric, screenprinted cover.

The Great British Railways site as of July 2024

In July 2024, the newly-elected UK Government announced its proposals for re-nationalizing the country’s railways. The website for the new organization, Great British Railways, features the typeface called Rail Alphabet 2. This is intended to be the new face of the UK rail network.

Rail Alphabet 2 is an updated and enhanced version of the original Rail Alphabet designed by Margaret Calvert of Kinneir Calvert Associates in the early sixties. It’s being designed by Calvert in collaboration with Henrik Kubel of A2-TYPE. From an article by Dezeen:

“It is sharper in appearance,” Calvert said. “This is particularly noticeable in how the curves join the vertical stem of the letterform, at an angle; and also lighter and more compact than the original Rail Alphabet.”

The Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail (PDF) proposal document of 2021, adopted by Great British Railways, states that the Great British Railways project will use Rail Alphabet 2 across the rail network.

This publication is the first to use the new typeface, Rail Alphabet 2. This is a continuation and evolution of Margaret Calvert and Jock Kinneir’s original Rail Alphabet typeface, which was employed across the rail network from the mid-1960s.
Margaret Calvert has collaborated with designer Henrik Kubel to develop Rail Alphabet 2. It retains the overall proportions of the original but the letters are sharper and slightly more compact for maximum legibility.
Great British Railways will introduce Rail Alphabet 2 across the rail network, replacing the many different fonts used on railway signage.

The Great British Railways site at the time of its launch in October 2021

The Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail from June 2021 presents the first use of Rail Alphabet 2. The cover depicts Chester station.

Hosted at Somerset House in London, co-curated by Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard and Claire Catterall, The Horror Show! was a journey to the underbelly of Britain’s cultural psyche. The exhibition presented an alternative perspective on the last five decades of modern British history in three acts – Monster, Ghost and Witch. Recast as a story of cultural shapeshifting, each section interpreted a specific era through the lens of a classic horror archetype with thematically linked contemporaneous, new works and a survey of the counter-culture of the time. We were tasked with designing all 2-D aspects of the show. The graphics inside the exhibition, the marketing, publicity and the catalogue. Each one needed to fit seamlessly with the other and explain the complexity of the exhibition in a sympathetic form.

To accompany the exhibition, The Horror Show! catalogue is constructed with a unique, irregular concertina fold. When closed, this features a “Frankenstein’s monster” face, grotesquely confronting the viewer. Whilst once open and fully extended, it is revealed that the face is made up of photographs of artworks and cultural figures from in the show. This collaged cut-up is a metaphor for British society, consisting of the mainstream and counter-culture, the two constantly pressing and grinding against each other. The back of the catalogue features the main collage used in the publicity for the show, with the addition of a very important key, so that you understand who everybody is in the image.

Once you have opened the catalogue, you are confronted with three sections which, as in the show, are designed completely differently from each other with contrasting typography and paper stocks for each. The Introduction section is dark black and takes its styling from the combined spaces in the show. Monster puts on the stinking clothes of Punk DIY. Ghost is grey and washed out, never fully materialising on the page. Witch is bold, proud, modern and old – daring you to disagree.

The catalogue design needed to refer to the decades in the exhibition – the 70s, 80s, 90s and onwards but also be something very contemporary. This meant a selection of fonts which referred to the era of the ‘feeling’ of each section but were used in a contemporary way. They are thrown up against each other in ugly juxtapositions, symbolising how counter-culture needs to push into the mainstream to change us all and move creativity and society forward. The layouts also referred to this historical context. The Monster section is based on the 70s and 80s and is an updated version of the DIY punk fanzine. Ghost is ethereal, with typography almost not there. Witch is bold, alchemic, and strongly gothic but looks towards the future as much as the past.

The title on the spine brings together Ouroboros, Infidel, Trickster, Nylon & Draylon, Bastard, Virus VujaDe, Terminal Grotesque, Tourette Extreme, and Bradley DJR (for the exclamation mark). The O’s are custom drawn pictograms.

Back cover: “A twisted tale of modern Britain” combines Ouroboros, Serpiente Display, Trickster, and Nylon & Draylon.

Text inside the mouth is set in Combat. The fonts used for the “MONSTER” letters include Ouroboros, Bastard, Trickster, Fleshy Font, and Newspeak

Spread with text set in T1 Korium and Combat. “Freak Scene” combines Gandur Alte with Trickster. Year dates are from Zloy.

The “Ghost” letters are taken from Lapicide and Marian Black. The italic for the text on the ear is from Faust.

More Marian Black and Lapicide, with Melancholia Italic used for captions

Captions feature Faust Italic, upright Melancholia, numerals from Gosna, and Tourette Normal.

The text on the left half of the eye is set in Ni Resolution Blackletter. The “WITCH” letters are from Infidel, Nylon & Draylon, Ni Resolution Blackletter, Virus VujaDe, and Prototype.

Titles feature overlapping letters from Ni Resolution Blackletter and Nylon & Draylon. The byline is in Terminal Grotesque, the text in Larish Alte.

More text in Larish Alte, with initials and page numbers from Ni Resolution Blackletter

Introducing the latest cookbook from Britain’s beloved Michelin-starred chef, Tom Kerridge. Pub Kitchen offers a delightful collection of over 100 recipes that bring the essence of pub food right into your home kitchen. Kerridge, celebrated for his modern British culinary expertise, returns to his roots with this flavorful culinary journey.

Renowned chef Andi Oliver hails Tom as the “King of flavor-packed, no-nonsense food,” and The Sunday Times recognizes him as one of our most esteemed chefs. Prue Leith describes his approach as “warm-hearted, honest, and joyful,” while Paul Ainsworth calls it “next-level pub food.”

The book is designed using Romie Regular and Italic (back cover) by Margot Lévêque, supported by Railroad Gothic or similar (subtitle) and an unidentified oldstyle serif.

Bastard Countryside collects together fifteen years worth of exploration within the British landscape, dwelling on what Victor Hugo called the ‘bastard countryside’: “somewhat ugly but bizarre, made up of two different natures”. Robin Friend’s large-format colour images scrutinise these in-between, unkempt, and often surreal marginal areas of the country, highlighting frictions between the pastoral sublime and the discarded, often polluted reality of the present.

Starting from a classical landscape tradition, Friend’s meticulous 5×4 photographs are given heightened effect through exaggerations of colour and composition, embodying friction between British pastoral ideals and present reality. In particular, Friend follows moments in which the expected narrative of the landscape is rudely interrupted: often through leakage, pollution, or the wreckage and containment of nature.

In his accompanying essay, writer Robert Macfarlane describes Bastard Countryside as “a vision par excellence of our synthetic ‘modern nature’– produced by assemblage and entanglement rather than purity and distinction”. Contained within Friend’s photographs are “hard questions […] about what kinds of landscape one might wish either to pass through or to live in; about what versions of ‘modern nature’ might be worth fighting for, and why.”

Poster for the Aldermaston to London march on Easter 1962, designed by Ken Garland. From Wikipedia:

The Aldermaston marches were anti-nuclear weapons demonstrations in the 1950s and 1960s, taking place on Easter weekend between the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire, England, and London, over a distance of fifty-two miles, or roughly 83 km. At their height in the early 1960s they attracted tens of thousands of people and were the highlight of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) calendar.

The design prominently features what now is universally known as the peace symbol (☮︎). Initially it stood for “nuclear disarmament” – Gerald Holtom designed it by superimposing the characters N and D of the flag semaphore. Its first major appearance was at the original Aldermaston march in 1958, which ran in the opposite direction, starting in London. You can learn more about the symbol and its history on 99% Invisible and in Mark Sinclair’s article for Fast Company.

For the typography, Garland combined two typefaces. The wide heavy caps are from Annonce Grotesque, arranged with tight spacing, as if the letters were linking arms and joining a protest march, too. Some of the glyphs seem to be hand-made. At least the repeating numerals (see 2 and 3) aren’t identical, nor do they match the original glyphs. Chances are that Garland worked with transfer lettering – Annonce Grotesque was among the first typefaces to be adopted by Letraset, and is shown in a catalog from 1960. He either ran out of numerals, or, more likely, worked with sheets that didn’t contain these glyphs in the first place: according to a later catalog from around the mid-1960s, the largest size, sheet IL 130 in 26mm/96pt, offered capitals only. For lowercase letters, one had to get sheet IL 131. And those who wanted to use numerals had to settle for a smaller size, IL 132 in 36pt – they simply weren’t available in 96pt.

The condensed sans used for the stations is Monotype Grotesque Condensed (series 318). The digital version is not an exact match in all the details; see a specimen of the original here.

Garland donated nine of his posters to the Design Museum’s permanent collection, including this one. The poster is also in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum and on display at V&A South Kensington.

Via Giles Booth

Detail

Detail. The numerals were apparently added by hand.

From Tate:

This fascinating exhibition book traces the connection between Britain and the Caribbean in the visual arts from the 1950s to today, a social and cultural history more often told through literature or popular music. It celebrates how people from the Caribbean have forged new communities and identities in post-war Britain – and in doing so have transformed British culture and society. With contributions by a variety of authors, including Paul Gilroy and fashion designer Grace Wales Bonner, Life Between Islands presents post-war British art history in its global and transnational dimensions, and reveals how these were shaped by the struggle against Empire and its legacies.

Cover and headline text is set in Alias Elephant, with captions and back cover text in Emigre’s Eidetic Neo. The catalogue was designed by The Bon Ton.

A light face for a heavy subject: Colin Brignall’s Premier Lightline (Letraset, 1969) is the sole ingredient for the book jacket to the first edition of Studies in British Transport History 1870–1970, published by David & Charles in 1974. It is used with its alternate high-waisted A, narrow S, and both forms of R.

Derek H. Aldcroft is an economic historian who worked at the University of Leicester. He also lectured at the University of Glasgow, and later served as a professor and chair at the University of Sydney. From 1994 until his retirement, Aldcroft was a research professor at Manchester Metropolitan University.

In 1993, London design studio Stylorouge perfectly encapsulated the Anglocentric, nostalgic tone of the burgeoning “Britpop” movement with their design for Blur’s second album Modern Life Is Rubbish. The type used here is Festival Titling, created by Phillip Boydell (1896–1984) for Monotype as the official display face for the 1951 Festival of Britain — an astute choice to suggest that a large part of Britpop’s not-so-subtle rhetoric included a sense of longing for the glory days of the British Empire (the cover for Blur’s single “For Tomorrow”, released a few weeks before the album and also designed by Stylorouge, showed two WWII Spitfire fighter aircrafts in full “Battle of Britain” mode).

The painting here, by artist Paul Gribble, depicts the iconic 1937 Mallard steam engine, whose original brass nameplate was fittingly lettered in all-caps Gill Sans. A proud symbol of British industrial power and ingenuity, today the Mallard is on display at the National Railway Museum in York.

From Mike Ashworth:

One of the many BBC booklets issued over the years and by the mid-1930s they were, after a very staid early start design-wise, starting to get a little more thoughtful. This vignette is by “Douglas” and the pamphlet was printed at the Kynoch Press in Birmingham, the ‘house’ printers of ICI who were also indertaking external work some of a very high standard.

The booklet discusses a series of broadcast radio talks, twelve in total, that look at what made the British British and there are some assumptions that nowadays may be slightly cringeworthy, some bordering on the topic of now discredited eugenics!

Title and author name are set in tracked out caps from Koloss, designed by Jakob Erbar and first cast in 1923 by Ludwig & Mayer. Its name is the German version of Colossus, from the Ancient Greek word for a giant statue. The three lines in small roman caps use Goudy Modern, designed by Frederic Goudy in New York, USA, inspired by the caption on a French engraving. “National Character” is in Plantin, an oldstyle roman produced in 1913 by the British Monotype. It’s loosely based on types cut by Frenchman Robert Granjon and named after Antwerp-based printer Christophe Plantin. The Plantin typeface was made by American-born designer Frank Hinman Pierpont, with help from Fritz Stelzer, his assistant of German origin.

Strong type in an uncompromising layout for the cover of Priyamvada Gopal’s latest book. All text is set in black caps from the ambiguous ITC Honda and the no-nonsense Gothic No. 13. The stack of red bars is interrupted twice to open the view to the depiction of an uprising.

Insurgent Empire shows how Britain’s enslaved and colonial subjects were active agents in their own liberation. What is more, they shaped British ideas of freedom and emancipation back in the United Kingdom. — Verso Books

Hellebore is a collection of writings and essays devoted to British folk horror and the themes that inspire it: folklore, myth, history, archaeology, psychogeography, witches, and the occult.

The first issue of the A5 limited-run magazine edited by Maria J. Pérez Cuervo was published on Samhain 2019 and is dedicated to the topic of human sacrifice. The cover art is Come Unto The Corn by Paul Watson. Additional artwork was provided by Eli John. Hellebore is being art directed by Nathaniel Hébert of Winter-Hébert, who comments:

The masthead was adapted from an Edwardian typeface, Herold AKA “Reklameschrift Herold”. For Hellebore, I gave the letterforms an art-nouveau facelift by way of the 70s.

Reklameschrift Herold was designed by Hermann Hoffmann and first cast by the Berthold type foundry in 1901. The series was later expanded by schmal (compressed), Kontur (outline), and fett (bold) styles. There are a number of digitizations as well as contemporary reinterpretations (see the typeface page for details). In Herold, all the weight is distributed around the top and bottom of the letters, giving it a squeezed, claustrophobic feel.

The Hellebore logo exclusively shows its high-waisted caps. The modifications make it look as if just emerged from a swamp. Hébert increased the flabbiness of Herold’s already wobbly contours, with more pronounced concaves. Most notably, the R became gaunt, exhibiting a smaller eye and a limpish leg.

Herold also appears for headlines, in unmodified (or less heavily modified) form. It’s paired with Berton Hasebe’s Portrait Condensed (Commercial Type, 2013). I’m not saying there’s something inherently eerie about Portrait, but the first documented Use was David Pearson’s cover for the Bonnier Pocket edition of The Shining.

Source: www.flickr.com Bradford Timeline. License: CC BY-NC.

“The world’s largest selling musical newspaper. Every Friday”. Magazine ad from 1959, featuring the New Musical Express logo as it was used from c. 1953 to 1966.

Today marks the issue of the final print copy of the New Musical Express. After 66 years as one of the UK’s predominant music publications, NME ceases its weekly print edition, and will from now on exist only online.

When The New Musical Express launched in 1952, its name was displayed in enlongated Bodoni-like caps with inline, boasting enlarged initial and final letters. At least by early 1953, this logo had already made way for two lines in bold expressive and slightly top-heavy caps, shown reversed in a black field. Although handdrawn, the letterforms clearly are based on a typeface. It is Fanfare by Louis Oppenheim. The qualifier “new” is added in lowercase connected script. With some minor changes, this version was in use until October 1966 (No. 1031).

Fonts In Use¨. License: CC BY.

This resetting in Louis, a faithful digital interpretation of Fanfare’s regular width, shows where the designer of the NME logo took liberties with the template. Most notably, ‘M’ got spikier, ‘S’ was freed from the vertical limitations of type, and the weirdly condensed (German) ‘C’ was widened up.

Source: www.flickr.com Klaus Hiltscher. License: All Rights Reserved.

No. 996, February 11, 1966, featuring Billy Fury and a redrawn version of the logo. Unlike before, ‘P’ and ‘R’ here aren’t clipped at the top.

Source: www.ebay.co.uk License: All Rights Reserved.

No. 1032, October 21, 1966, with The Monkees (in Kalligraphia). This cover was the first to feature the new logo in Playbill.

It was superseded by a logo in Playbill, Robert Harling’s reinterpretation of the 19th-century “French Antique”, initially set in three lines of mixed-case characters, and still enclosed in a black field — which later became red when the paper changed to two-color printing. The issue from February 5, 1972 introduced a revised version. “MUSICAL EXPRESS” is again in Playbill, but now appears in all caps. “NEW” is set in condensed sans serif caps enclosed in an angled black box. By 1974, the lines were spaced tighter together. The prefix is shown in a wide Clarendon and later in informal script caps. Around 1975, “new” appears in lowercase Mistral. In the course of 1976, the field was dropped, and Playbill’s caps are shown in red with a black outline. Two years later, the word “new” in Mistral was relegated to the left side, rotated.

Source: www.ebay.co.uk License: All Rights Reserved.

The copy from January 3, 1976 shows Playbill in all caps, with tight linespacing; “new” is in Mistral.

Source: www.theclash.com License: All Rights Reserved.

The issue from December 2, 1978 with The Clash on the cover was the first to feature the new NME logo designed by Barney Bubbles. Univers Bold is used for the full name within the initials and also for other copy.

On December 2, 1978, New Musical Express introduced a redesign devised by Barney Bubbles. The new logo shows the initials NME in bold sans serif letters. They appear to be custom drawn, with an ‘M’ that references both the 1950s logo based on Fanfare as well as the local tradition of typefaces like Johnston or Gill Sans. In the first incarnation, the letterforms were outlined and contained the full name rotated inside the left stems, in caps from Univers Bold. The enclosed words later disappeared and the outlines went and came back, but the basic logo remained in use until today.

See also Avo Raup’s visual overview of selected covers from 1970–2015 and “Farewell to NME: a rock’n’roll riot that petered into silence” by Alexis Petridis (The Guardian).

An interesting and appropriate use of Festival Titling in this advertising poster for an exhibition of British Neo-Romantic Art at Beverley Art Gallery.

In response to Dezeen's British passport design competition, I created a design with hand-drawn illustrations that put Britain in a positive light. Below are some of the pages from my design, which I hope to expand upon in the future.

My goal was to look at scenes in Britain and use them to re-establish our identity positively. As a result, the theme for my design is Integration, with integrate defined as “bringing people or groups into equal participation”. Brexit has been extremely divisive so I didn’t want a divisive design, but I still wanted a strong message.

I’m specifically avoiding using the word “tolerance”, as the aim is to represent equality, and have integration celebrated, not just tolerated.

I’ve used Chiswick Sans Text throughout, a vernacular typeface which was inspired by lettering found around Britain. Alongside a colour palette that uses a combination of red, white and blue inks, my aim was to create a look that is distinctly British and also forward-thinking. The red cover is also a progression from previous colour covers.

Exhibition: "British Painting in the Sixties" organised by The Contemporary Art Society
Date: 1962 Jan 9 – 1963 May 17
Poster found in Tate Gallery Archive / Tate Britain Shop, London.

The cover of the Smash Hits prototype issue from September 1978 featured Plastic Bertrand and a logo in Antique Olive Nord Italic with dramatic drop shadow. The official No. 1 from November 1978 credits Ross George with the design.

The British pop music magazine Smash Hits ran from 1978 to 2006. From Smash Hits Remembered:

Smash Hits was founded in 1978 by Nick Logan, who had previously edited the New Musical Express during one of its most creative periods and went on to create ’80s fashion bible The Face. […] The backbone of the magazine in its early years, and one of its major early selling points, was the publication of Top 20 song lyrics. […] During this period, appearing on the cover of Smash Hits was a sign that an act had finally ‘arrived’. […] For most of the 1980s and early 1990s it was the first choice magazine for many teenagers, at its peak selling half a million copies every bi-weekly issue. A record breaking issue in 1989, featuring Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan, sold more than a million copies!

This post documents the first four versions of the magazine’s logo, spanning the publication’s most influential years — from italic Antique Olive Nord (1978) to equally heavy Futura-like caps (1980) [edit: apparently it’s Filmotype Free, see comments], to the iconic combination of Allegro and Volta (1982), and finally the angular condensed letterforms of Grecian (1985) which remained in use until September 2000.

All images courtesy of Brian McCloskey of Like Punk Never Happened, the definitive Smash Hits archive. He adds a new issue every fortnight, always on the thirtieth anniversary of the original publication date.

Antique Olive had to make way for shaded caps similar to Futura Extra Bold (but with vertical terminals on the ‘S’ [edit: apparently it’s Filmotype Free, see comments], paired with a handwritten “Smash”) from Vol. 2, No. 20 (October 2, 1980) on. Steve Bush was the magazine’s Design Editor at that time. Cover: Gary Numan by Dick Wallis/Rocktography.

The Allegro/Volta cover logo was introduced with Vol. 4, No. 21 from October 14, 1982. It had already appeared in the interior of the previous issue. Design Editor: Steve Bush. Design: David Bostock, Kimberley Leston. Cover: Culture Club by Eric Watson.

Vol 7, No. 16 from August 14, 1985 was the last one to feature this type combination.
Cover: Billy Idol by Retna.

The logo in Grecian was introduced in Vol. 7 No. 17 (August 28, 1985), and would last for 15 years. Editor: Steve Bush. Assistant Editor (Design): David Bostock. Design: Vici MacDonald. Cover: Simon le Bon and Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran, by Denis O’Regan/Idols.

A book about the history of The Glasgow School of Art building designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. 196 pages. The fonts in use are New Rail Alphabet Bold/Medium and Gill Sans Regular/Italic (+6° oblique). The choices are a tribute to British Railways and British Rail.