Certificates like this one were issued by the Chinese consulate-general in San Francisco to show that the holder was exempt from the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned Chinese laborers from entering the United States. The Chinese exclusion policy remained in effect until it was lifted in 1943.

The heading combines a Celtic with Ronaldson (also used for the word “SEAL” at the bottom left), and the following paragraph combines Title Text Open No. 3 with Spencerian Script. The word “DESCRIPTION” is in Old Style Extended, while the labels for each item are in a Modern/Scotch. The italic at the bottom is in a style that was presented by MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan as a companion to Ronaldson (Old Style, No. 4) as well as to Bradford Old Style (Old Style, No. 2) and Binny (Old Style, No. 3). The Chinese signatures aren’t typographic.

The Ten Commandments of the United States of America reflects on the discrepancy between political statements and the actual actions of the US government. By analyzing historical and important speeches by US presidents, ten of the most proclaimed statements were identified and phrased in reference to the biblical Ten Commandments. Images depicting the actual reality of the US politics are placed on the backside of each commandment – the downside of reality, so to speak. The core of the gatefold publication marks the conclusion of these statements. Whether it’s meant to be cynical or hopeful is up to the reader to decide.

Made in 2019 as a student project at ABK Stuttgart.

Dead End by Nicola Moscelli (curated by Steve Bisson, with graphic design by Roberto Vito D'Amico, and published by Penisola Edizioni in collaboration with Antiga Edizioni) is a visual documentary book exploring the US-Mexico border.

Conceived as a dossier, the book catalogues black-and-white panoramic format hyper-surveillance imagery from Google Street View alongside vintage postcards and old prints, confronting border issues across space and time through the recurring motif of the dead end—both physical and metaphorical. The visual content is enriched with quotes from ordinary people and historical figures, along with excerpts from government documents, interviews, social media, poetry fragments, and song lyrics.

The author’s textual essays provide additional depth to the research. Dead End further includes a foreword titled “How to Transcend the Distance” by Maceo Montoya (artist, writer, professor of Chicana/o Studies at UC Davis, and editor of Huizache magazine), an interview with Miriam Ticktin (professor of Anthropology at CUNY Graduate Center), and an afterword, “Who Draws the Boundaries?”, by Steve Bisson.

The book spans 360 pages in 200 mm × 297 mm format. It is produced with offset printing and features a soft cover with flaps (Fedrigoni Materica Clay 250g/m² paper). The binding is a Swiss brochure style with an exposed spine, adding a distinctive tactile and visual element to the publication.

The typeface Exposure—designed by Federico Parra-Barrios and distributed by 205TF—has been used for the textual essays. The open-source font IBM Plex Mono is employed for labelling the dossier content.

The book is composed of four distinct sections. A Mexican border section and a US border section, both printed on Fedrigoni Arena Rough White 90g/m², are enclosed by the cover flaps. Positioned between them are the colophon, printed on Favini Burano Giallo Zolfo, and a section on the evolution of the border, printed on Fedrigoni Symbol Freelife Satin Premium White 130. Additionally, a cartographic map is included to help navigate the book’s content.

Poland. Key to Europe, featuring Peignot gras dramatically staged with shadow effect and a sloping baseline

Two books written by Raymond Leslie Buell and published by Alfred A. Knopf, both with Peignot used for the title.

Buell (1896–1946) was an American social scientist who at the time served as president of the Foreign Policy Association. In Poland. Key to Europe, he points out the importance of Poland maintaining its independence and thus saving Europe “from the domination of either Fascism or Communism”. It was published in April 1939 – a few months before Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and soon after attacked Poland. Isolated America followed in May 1940, when German troops invaded France and the Low Countries. In this book, Buell expressed his stance against U.S. isolationism. One and a half years later, the United States abandoned its neutrality and entered World War II following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour.

Peignot was pretty new in 1939. A.M. Cassandre’s groundbreaking design with the novel mix of capital and minuscule forms was first released by Deberny & Peignot in 1937. The bold weight, Peignot gras, followed in 1938. On the jacket for the first book, it’s paired with Egmont and Ariston. “Key to Europe” is handlettering. It appears to mimick Ariston (see the spine panel) – or is it the other way around? The text on the inner flap is set in Monotype Bodoni.

The bold geometric sans on the second book jacket is Vogue, used with some of its alternate glyphs. The author’s name is lettered, again not too far removed from Ariston.

Second edition jacket of Isolated America with a blurb by William Allen White

F[2]CKED serves as a platform for expressing frustration arising from life circumstances (the legal problems with international students' spouses integration into a social and economic system in the United States) when there is no other avenue to speak out and shed light on a problem. The zine includes quotes from the research paper titled "How Immigration Law Impacts the Household Life of F-2 Wives in the USA" by Samit Dipon Bordoloi, who is affiliated with the Department of Health and Community Studies at Western Washington University in Bellingham, USA. The zine provides insights through the lens of personal experience.

The grid consists of blocks that have the dimensions of a passport picture, and constraints images and paragraphs sometimes displacing and cropping them, in the same way, formalities and laws restrict the rights of F2 visa holders.

Designed during the intensive typography course at Alkali.Design School and printed by Irrelevant Press.

You can flip through the zine on Issuu.

Despite the chaos, the must-see spots, the food poisoning, and the lost-in-translation moments, the memories of family vacations are preserved in the poorly framed photos and the laughs shared over the pickles encountered along the way.

In Os Hassums, comedian Leandro Hassum embarks on a motorhome journey with his family through the United States and explores the pains and delight of traveling with loved ones.

The show’s identity takes a contemporary spin on the retro and kitsch visuals associated with travel postcards, motorhomes, and motel graphics adding saturated colors and expressive type to their air of faded glory. Each trip stop gets its own type treatment and title card responding to the place's vibe.

The show logo mixes Eubie Script and an extruded version of BN Dime Display. Supporting copy and credits use Fraunces.

Design by Bárbara Abbês, with motion design by Renan Vasconcelos.

The publication Abdias Nascimento: A Panamefrican Artist, from MASP (São Paulo Museum of Art), stands as a comprehensive compilation, presenting the most extensive collection of the artist's works ever published. The core content is printed on two distinct paper types: an uncoated variant for the textual components and a thicker, coated paper employed in the portfolio of paintings and the opening section, showcasing posters crafted by the artist.

Each text page is framed in red, seamlessly extending to the book's edges, effectively delineating various sections within the catalog. The design incorporates the geometric sans-serif open-source font Lineal for titles, drawing inspiration from symbols found in African-origin religions, which are recurrent themes in the artist's body of work. Signifier, the brutalist font employed for texts, credits, and subtitles, also establishes a subtle connection with the artwork, with its geometric serifs and raw finish, while embodying an overall sense of elegance and readability.

Designed with a bilingual approach, the book offers two cover options, emphasizing its inclusive nature. The incorporation of the Brazilian and American flags not only serves as a visual representation but also underscores the catalog's focus on the artist's significant contributions in both countries. This thoughtful design choice adds depth to the narrative, highlighting Abdias Nascimento's impactful presence and influence in diverse cultural contexts.

The book was one of the winners of the AIGA 50 Books | 50 Covers of 2022.

Posters made in 1968 by art director/designer Bernie Zlotnick at Young & Rubicam for the Advertising Council as part of a campaign for the Peace Corps, a United States government agency and program dedicated to training and deploying volunteers to provide international development assistance. Copywriting by Mort Redner. Photo by legendary George Lois-era Esquire photographer Carl Fischer.

The poster shown above may have been one of the original uses of ITC Bernase Roman (my theory: Bernie Zlotnick + Tom Carnase). Adverts with Bernase Roman appeared in magazines in January 1969, February 1969, and March 1969.

An earlier version used Railroad Gothic, see further below. Adverts with Railroad Gothic can be found in magazines from December 1968 and January 1969.

Detail

Landscape version (11″×28″) dated 10/68 featuring Railroad Gothic and Romana

Poster with Railroad Gothic and Young & Rubicam credit line

Print ad with Railroad Gothic

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Leo Tolstoy once wrote that every happy family is alike, whereas every unhappy family is unhappy in their own way. Likewise, every perfect book is perfect in the same way. This book does not belong to the category of perfection. Indeed, it is imperfect in numerous ways.

The text above is from the back cover or our book Imperfect. It is in many ways a curious book. It lacks covers, but comes in a box. When opening the box the reader first finds a single leaf note printed on one side. This note serves as an instruction as to how to handle the book so that reading is possible. The first words on the note tell the reader: “You will need a knife”.

The reason for such a strange mandate stems from the fact that the edges of the books are not trimmed. Meaning that in order to enjoy the contents of the book the reader has to cut open the pages themselves. Now at first this might seem like unnecessary attempt at making something different only for its own sake, but this would be a mistaken notion. In our books we always look for some reason for choosing a particular form, and Imperfect is no exception.

To explain why this form was, if not essential for the book, then at least beneficial for telling the story I will however need to take you on a small detour first. But in the end I promise that everything will be clear(er).

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

In a previous post I shared with you how we tried (and failed) to gather funds for a bike trip across the United States. But even despite our much lacking financial acumen we managed to make it to New York City. On the 3rd of June 2016 our great bicycle adventure began from the corner of the 17th St. and 2nd Ave. Our destination was the Pacific Coast, though at this point we didn’t dare tell anyone about it. We just said we were on our way to Delaware, and even then we were met with ill-hidden skepticism.

If you think that riding a bike across a continent wouldn’t be difficult enough by itself, we decided to raise the stakes and combine it with an art project. We had previously written and published books about our adventures, but these books had been conceived of and made after the journey already had ended. One example of such a book is Tour d’Europe in which we told the story of us cycling from our hometown Porvoo in Finland to Nice by the Mediterranean Sea.

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

The project we now envisioned was different, and in a sense simple enough – each day we would send out a postcard. In these postcards we would document our journey, where we went, how we felt, who we met, and what we thought about. Kaisa would illustrate and write the cards, whereas I would hop into the post offices to get the stamps cancelled by hand, as to provide the artifacts with yet another level of information.

The recipients to the cards were my young niece and nephews Alwa, Edwin, and Wilhelm, who at the time of our trip were 3, 6, and 8 years old and lived in Helsinki, Finland. Our reasoning was that the kids were at this point too young to understand or even care about the antics of their old relatives, but that in the distant future they might wish to learn about what we had done.

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

That we called our book Imperfect was born out of the fact that in making it we had to give up much of the control a graphic designer takes for granted. This is to say that there was a built-in randomness into the process. There was no chance to edit the already sent pages. Nor did we know what would happen the next day. Or even which cards would actually make it across the ocean. Making the book was for all intents and purposes an analog live-streaming of our adventure.

The more we thought about postcards, the more miraculous they began to appear to us. A postcard is not restrained by the same boundaries that control us: It crosses not only spatial borders, but temporal ones as well. Postcards speak to us in a voice that is simultaneously static and dynamic. Their voice is static inasmuch that which is written with ink on paper stands, but dynamic in the sense that their voice will have a different tone and meaning when read fifty years from now, compared to being read today. Which is to say that the meaning of the postcards will grow along with the kids.

The cards took their own road. We rode on ours. Fields of green turned into prairie, and prairie turned into mountains, forests and desert. Then one day in August we stood on the shore of the Pacific Ocean. And just a few days later we rolled over the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco. Against all odds we had crossed the continent. Our expedition was now over.

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

The next adventure was turning all this into something publishable. Our experiment of documenting our journey had been a success, at least as far as we were concerned. So why not share it with the world? First we sought permission from the kids, it was after all their cards we wanted to publish. To our great relief they granted us permission. Or at least cared too little to actually forbid us from moving forth with our book plans.

But you are really here to hear about the typography, right? Well, we’ve got you covered! The typeface we chose for our book is Cheltenham. It is a roman influenced by the aesthetic sensibilities of the Arts and Crafts movement, and drawn by Bertram Goodhue and Ingalls Kimball in 1896 in New York. It is a well-known typeface, and one with a fair share of idiosyncrasies. Characters that have, while much loved, also been at the receiving end of some criticism. The venerable American printer and historian of typography Daniel Berkeley Updike wrote: “Owing to certain eccentricities of form, [Cheltenham] cannot be read comfortably for any length of time.”

We could think of no typeface better suited for our book than Cheltenham. It is far from perfect but makes up for any such deficiency with a most charming personality. The missing old style figures for the typeface were drawn by our trusted lettering artist Teo Tuominen in the fall of 2016. He is also the person to credit for the beautiful script on the back cover post card.

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Along with the instructions on how to handle the book, the book block itself and the box it came in, we also included a map. This map depicts our slow progress across a continent, with statistics underneath to further illuminate what took place and where. But the main thing we sought to convey with the help of the map was all the kindness and help we received throughout our journey. While it might seem bleak at times, this trip imbued the two of us with a strong conviction that there still is hope for humanity, even when it doesn’t always feel that way.

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Postscript

Once the book was published we hosted a party to celebrate in its honor. The posters shown below advertised the event. The images depict our feelings regarding the journey: The underdog who took a serious beating but still remains standing, and the strong pioneer lady who is prepared to fight for what she believes in. In the third one you can see young Alwa being held by me. (She got to participate as the representative of the kids, as the brothers had already made their appearance in another project of ours. But that is a story for another time.)

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Christoffer Leka. License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: www.abebooks.com Zed Books. License: All Rights Reserved.

Book jacket (front)

The first edition of Edmund Wilson’s Travels in Two Democracies uses two weights from Signal. Designed by Walter Wege, this non-kerning informal script was first cast by the Berthold foundry in Berlin. While the title on the book jacket is set in the regular weight from 1931, the cloth cover sports the lighter Script-Signal that was added in 1932. Both times the words are placed on a sloping baseline, counterbalancing the slant of the script letters.

Ralf Herrmann currently is running a campaign to fund the creation of a faithful digitization of all three weights of Signal, including the bold Block-Signal not featured in this use, plus a variable version. If you want to help the project to reach its goal, you can do so for a couple more days, until November 21, 2023.

Source: iaddb.org Scan courtesy of IAADB. License: All Rights Reserved.

“Expensive hand lettering? Certainly not” – Signal was imported to the United States by Continental Typefounders Association, Inc. This advert mentioning all three weights and showing the bold Block-Signal (alongside Stempel’s Zarte Memphis) was included in the November 1934 issue of Advertising Arts.

Edmund Wilson (1895–1972) is best known as literary critic, but also was an author of poetry, fiction, memoirs, and more. Travels in Two Democracies is one of his political writings, in which he compares life in the Depression-era United States and in the Soviet Union. The book was published in 1936, a few years after diplomatic relations between the two nations were established – and shortly before Stalin instituted the Great Purge, consolidating power to become a dictator.

The book typography is credited to Robert Josephy. Chances are he designed the jacket and cover as well.

Source: www.abebooks.com Zed Books. License: All Rights Reserved.

The author’s name is set in caps from Stymie.

Source: www.abebooks.com Zed Books. License: All Rights Reserved.

Book cover with the title in the lighter Script-Signal

Source: www.abebooks.com Peak Dragon Bookshop. License: All Rights Reserved.

Book cover with spine

Source: www.abebooks.com Zed Books. License: All Rights Reserved.

Full jacket. Additional text on the back and the inner flaps is set in Bodoni, ATF Garamond, and Vogue. From the book’s description:

In a special sense, Edmund Wilson was well qualified to do this book, because during his long visit to Russia he discovered exactly what it meant to be an American, and he came back with a strong sense of his own nationality. “I feel convinced,” he writes, “that American republican institutions, disastrously as they are always being abused, have some permanent and absolute value.” He adds, however: “We shall be in no position to reprove the Russians till we shall he able to show them an American socialism which is free from the Russian defects.”

Christopher Brian King designed a comical cover, with illustration by Andrew Rae, for Thank You for Your Servitude. In this journalistic account, Mark Leibovich follows the Republican Party’s culture of submission, sycophancy, and degradation of integrity surrounding Donald Trump’s presidency.

The cover depicts a cast of Republicans such as Mike Pence, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Mitch McConnell, Ben Carson, and Sean Hannity bestowing Trump with their infamous expressions and the classic American offerings of ice cream and burgers. The on-the-nose ridicule compounds with Ivanka Trump shilling to the viewer a can of beans, crisis vacationers Chris Christie and Ted Cruz donning souvenir headgear, Lindsey Graham lap dogging, Rudy Giuliani demon-eyed and wined, and Jeff Sessions suited up as an elf.

Fist pumping Capitol insurrectionists riot in the distance, with QAnon Shaman Jake Angeli in the foreground wielding a flag of the subtitle, set in an orderly Gotham Condensed and free-flowing Cortado. The title on the large flag is also set in Cortado; the personality of the font paired with the language of the title reiterate the unironic and unsettling reality of this era of U.S. politics. “This Town” is added in House Slant, visually quoting the cover of that book from 2014.

Othello in all-caps for America’s Greatest Hero. Released by Elektra Records in 1981, it’s the only studio album by Joey Scarbury (b. 1955), featuring the hit theme from the TV series The Greatest American Hero. The use of Othello references the titles of the series. Art direction by Ron Coro, with photography by Jim Shea.

[More info on Discogs]

Futura Black with all-caps Futura for Coast to Coast, the fourth US studio album by the English rock band The Dave Clark Five. Released in 1965, it contains the hit singles “Any Way You Want It” and “Everybody Knows (I Still Love You)”. The band name on the bass drum is in caps from Folio extrafett. Photography by Henry Parker.

[More info on Discogs]

Dust jacket for The Lively Commerce: Prostitution in the United States by Charles Winick and Paul M. Kinsie, published in 1971 by Quadrangle Books, Inc (Chicago).

Jacket design by Milton Charles, using two weights of Kabel. Miriam Rosenbloom wrote about his jackets for V.C. Andrews for ABDA, quoted with bio below:

In 1973 he became Art Director at Pocket Books – the famous imprint of Simon & Schuster that introduced mass-market paperbacks to the American market in the model of Penguin in the UK. During the 70s, he designed jackets for some of the literary greats of the time including Pynchon and Vonnegut, as well as creating genre-defining work including Harold Robbin’s Spellbinder and Jackie Collins’s Hollywood Wives.

It’s clear he was no stranger to using Kabel. You can also see more of his work on Flickr, in albums curated by Leif Peng and Kyle Katz.

Detail

Tori Amos wrote the concept album Scarlet’s Walk (2002) while on tour in the US in the months following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Taking on a character of her own creation named Scarlet, Amos explores American identity in the form of a road trip across the country. The album is illustrated with photographs of Amos as Scarlet, which were taken in Montana by Kurt Markus, some of which peek through the blocks of text comprising the lyrics and credits. Album and song titles are handwritten, while the printed text is a combination of Son Gothic and ITC Goudy Sans Italic. On Scarlet’s map, Tori’s name is set in Profil, and the map legend in Belen. Art direction is by Sheri Lee and Dave Bett.

[More info on Discogs]

A map linking the songs on the album to the journeys of the character Scarlet.

Lyrics for the songs “Amber Waves”, “A Sorta Fairytale”, “Wednesday”, and “Strange”.

Lyrics for the songs “Scarlet's Walk”, “Virginia”, and “Gold Dust”.

Album credits, with extensive examples of Son Gothic and ITC Goudy Sans Italic.

Back cover of the CD, featuring the handwritten song titles.

Designer Ben Denzer encodes Ballast in a type-only cover for Democracy’s Data: The Hidden Stories in the U.S. Census and How to Read Them by Dan Bouk. Bold compressed type combined with strategic color make for a memorable typographic image and an effective reading of a long title.

Paperback edition

The Los Angeles-based design studio Use All Five used Lucifer by Nguyen Gobber and Roboto Condensed by Christian Robertson to design the 2022 edition of Google Frightgeist.

On the Google Frightgeist website itself, this project gets explained in more detail:

Every year, trillions of searches take place on Google, and Google Trends gives us an unparalleled look at what the world is searching for. Google News Initiative puts that data to use - from powering insightful journalism to helping you pick out your Halloween costume.

With Frightgeist, we went on a hunt to find the most popular Halloween costumes of 2022. Pulling from the top 500 costume searches in the United States, Frightgeist used Google Trends to tell people what costumes were trending around them and help them
find a costume that was sure to turn heads.

This graphic was widespread among anti-war and countercultural movements of the 1970s. While it’s not clear who executed the original design, the concept may have come from advertising photographer Bill Stettner, whose friend Peter Adams wrote to us as at Letterform Archive:

I have always understood the poster to be his idea […] Bill was full of political ideas and was definitely involved with badges and buttons at the time. I think the design was also intended for a button.

The hand-cut letters of “We won’t stand…” are based on Cooper Black, a typeface frequently seen in both commerce and counterculture. Lowercase text disrupts the traditionally even height of the flag’s stripes, while the ragged right edge adds a tattered effect. The repeating lettershapes on an uneven baseline, and flipped w in “won’t”, indicate that the source of the letters was transfer type or photographic reproduction, rather that hand lettering.

The U.S. flag has long provided artists a canvas for protest. Its simple, graphic iconography serves as a foil for the nation’s more complicated past and present. This piece is among several stars-and-stripes reinterpretations that appear in Strikethrough: Typographic Messages of Protest, a Letterform Archive exhibition opening July 23, 2022.

First published by John Day Company in 1952, this is Cardinal’s paperback edition (C-387) from 1959:

A New York Times-bestselling novel by the author of The Good Earth: An affecting portrait of interracial love in postwar Japan. Pearl S. Buck’s The Hidden Flower centers on the relationship between a Japanese student and an American soldier stationed in postwar Japan. The Japanese student’s father worked in the United States as a doctor, but had to flee to Kyoto to avoid imprisonment in an internment camp. The American soldier has inherited his family’s estate in Virginia, where interracial marriage is forbidden. Against such forces, and without the help of their families, how can the love between the young pair—and the future of their child—flourish? The Hidden Flower is an emotionally astute and moving exploration of a taboo love across cultures.

Cover art by Charles Binger. While the title itself is hand-lettered, most of the other text is set in a typeface that has similar qualities of broad-nib pen writing: it’s Post-Antiqua.

One of America’s favorite mottos – ‘United we stand, Divided we fall’ – brings to light a fundamental value cherished by the United States: unity. However, in my eyes this sentence illustrates perfectly the fragile political climate the country has been living in since its foundation, and is today at its peak.

I have always taken an active interest in the historical conflicts of the U.S., especially those dealing with slavery and the Civil Rights Movements. Furthermore, the George Floyd protests that erupted last year made me even more angry and outraged.

Through this project I wanted to expose division and racism, driven by white supremacy, a matter that has rocked the country since its birth.

I wanted to illustrate this failed melting pot through a personal editorial book, comprising of a short timeline of the African-American History, as well as historical photographs of fourteen major American riots and marches for Equality, from the 1950s to today.

The font used on cover is VTC Carrie by Vocal Type. Its designer Tré Seals designs typefaces that highlight a piece of history from a specific underrepresented race, ethnicity, or gender. The serif used for copy is Cormorant.