Source: www.flickr.com Uploaded to Flickr by Alan Mays and tagged with “belgian”, “broadgauge”, “glyptic shaded”, “old style extended”, “fashion”, “cloister”, and “french clarendon shaded”. License: All Rights Reserved.

This is a nineteenth-century advertising trade card for John P. Schaum, gas fitter and plumber, whose business was located in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The other side of the card features an illustration with a rabbit and flowers.

Chandeliers, Coal Oil Lamps, and Gas Fixtures.
Stoves, Heaters, and Ranges.
Gas Fitting and Plumbing.
John P. Schaum,
No. 24 South Queen Street, Lancaster, Pa.

The featured typefaces include Belgian (Bruce, 1867) and Fashion (Farmer, 1876). Most of the typefaces come from the catalog of MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan in Philadelphia. This includes Broadgauge (a foundry version of a design previously seen in wood as Antique Tuscan Extended, 1869) French Clarendon Shaded (1871), Cloister (1873), Glyptic Shaded, Caxtonian (both 1878), and Kitcat (1883). The grot on the back is a version of a design that was known in Germany as Moderne Steinschrift.

Source: www.flickr.com Uploaded to Flickr by Alan Mays and tagged with “fashion”, “kitcat”, “caxtonian” and “french clarendon shaded”. License: All Rights Reserved.

“Two motifs merge into one lenticular poster. The image changes depending on where you stand — there is no fixed final image, only perspectives. Cultural belonging exists in relation to context, position, and viewpoint. 400 × 600mm”

Hyperculture is the diploma project of Dabin Kim made at ABK Stuttgart. The project captures the blurring of cultural boundaries, allowing different cultures to coexist in a globalized world in a “both–and” rather than “either–or” way.

Cultural practices in East and West are explored through everyday creations, shared media, and consumption. This shows how trends move between cultures, overlap, and are interpreted differently. The practices are presented through quotes, articles, digital images, and original visuals.

Dabin Kim describes the project as follows:

The publication is read from both sides: one presents an Eastern perspective, the other a Western one. Each examines how the other culture’s practices are adopted, influenced, and often misunderstood in different contexts.

Chapter 1 focuses on Language, Chapter 2 on Food, and Chapter 3 on Industry—each from both perspectives. Chapter 4 concludes with interviews that bring both views together.

The conversations reveal that cultural identity is increasingly hybrid and fluid, shaped through consumption and digital media. While visual cultural boundaries blur, deeper social differences and experiences of belonging persist.

Looking across language, food, and industry, the West often translates cultural elements into simplified, marketable forms, while the East actively transforms and hybridizes global influences.

Hyperculture emerges as both a driver of cultural reduction and a source of creative reconfiguration – simultaneously part of the problem and part of the solution.

Designed with Solæ and OT Neue Montreal Squeezed. 232 pages, 210×297 mm

The text on the balloon (“HAPPY BIRTHD”) might be in all-caps Franklin Gothic Wide.

This box set with twelve 7″ records containing a total of fifty party playtime songs was released on Playhour, a sublabel of Pickwick Records, and advertised in 1970. The collage on the cover is by Frank Daniel. The three main display typefaces are all from the catalog of Photo-Lettering: “50” uses numerals from West Barnum, “Party Playtime” is in caps from Caruso Roxy, and the Playhour logo on the back, the inner sleeve and the labels features Gonzales Jeanette.

[More info on Discogs]

The Feminine Monarchie, or the History of Bees, a 1609 book by Charles Butler, is not only the first book on the science of beekeeping but also brought to public awareness that the bee colony is ruled by a queen rather than a king.

Made as a student project at RISD, this series of ten plates creates a taxonomy that compares the parts of the beehive to societal structures and an anthropology to how communities of bees and people behave. Each plate shows an illustration as a visual representation of the idea, as well as a quote from the book that discusses that specific plates themes.

Size (per plate): 6″×8″

Circue is a naïve display face that looks like it was created with a hole punch. Shown by VGC in 1973 without designer credits, it can here be seen in use on the sleeve for “The Day My Baby Gave Me A Surprize”. The song was released as the first single from Devo’s 1979 album, Duty Now for the Future.

[More info on Discogs]

The back cover mentions the title of the B-side, “Penetration in the Centrefold”, and credits the graphics to Devo, Inc. The wide all-caps sans is some derivative of Blair (but not ITC Blair), possibly Amsterdam Card Grotesque, which is Photo-Lettering’s adaptation of Kaart-Antieke. The bold style is Univers.

Design studio Our Polite Society used OPS And Ever, a newly released sanserif by OPS Type, for this book of archival research into Argentinian architect Amancio Williams (1913–1989) published by the Canadian Centre for Architecture in partnership with Spector Books. Readings by Studio Muoto, Claudia Shmidt, and Pezo von Ellrichshausen present new and expanded understandings of Williams’s work, and situate the social, material, and political dimensions of his practice within contemporary architectural discourse.

OPS And Ever, designed by Jan Egbers, is a proportional update and continuation of OPS Favorite, a monospace released by the foundry in 2019. In the book, it is used alongside the mono, which still features in the indexes. The headings and cover of the book are set in a still-unreleased Ultra cut of the typeface.

Ron Bar Café is a relaxed venue in Prague's Vinohrady district. It is known for its impressive rum selection and rotating beer specials. In addition to occasional exhibitions, lectures and concerts, this unconventional café/bar offers more than 130 rums worldwide. Moreover, you can enjoy delicious hot dogs, cocktails and perfectly conditioned beers in a relaxed atmosphere.

For the State Library of Western Australia, Block developed a refreshed identity that positions the institution as both a cultural anchor and a contemporary public space. The typographic concept is built around the deliberate pairing of Delphia (sans) and Gestura (serif), often set closely together within the same headline.

Rather than assigning each typeface a distinct functional role, the two coexist in direct dialogue. Gestura brings contrast and historical depth, while Delphia’s clean forms provide structure and modernity. Their interplay—sometimes alternating word by word or line by line—creates a dynamic rhythm that mirrors the Library’s mission: connecting the past with the present.

The system is supported by a flexible layout grid and ample white space, allowing type, image, and color to interact without hierarchy feeling rigid. The result is a visual identity that is literate, lively, and open to interpretation.

A series of three typographic posters inspired by Christopher Nolan’s film Inception. The project explores how Neue Helvetica—a neo-grotesque typeface renowned for its clarity, neutrality, and rational structure— can embody the blurred boundary between dream and reality. Chosen for its “invisible” qualities and Swiss design heritage, Helvetica becomes the architectural framework of these dreamscapes: stable, precise, yet concealed.

Descent and Ascent: Titles and slogans fragment and fade, suggesting the tension between the real and the imagined.

Limbo Effect: Repetition and layering of different Helvetica weights create instability and suspension, evoking the deepest dream level.

Infinite Loop: A closed composition of repeated text forms a tunnel-like structure, recalling the recursive, endless architectures in the film.

This work was created as part of the Typography course at LABASAD (Barcelona School of Arts & Design), under the guidance of professor Marc Salinas.

Judy Chicago: Revelations, this year’s art exhibition of the Ruhrfestspiele, showcases a pioneer of Feminist Art. Born in the United States in 1939, Judy Chicago gained prominence in the late 1960s for making work from a woman-centered perspective, which challenged the male-dominated landscape of the art world. An artistic polymath, Chicago’s work is characterised by a commitment to craft and experimentation, evident in her subject matter, methodology and choice of material. Throughout her six-decade career, Chicago has developed a distinctive visual language that contests the absence and erasure of women in the Western cultural canon. Her individual and collaborative projects address themes of women’s history; birth; masculinity; notions of power; the Holocaust; death and extinction; and a longstanding concern for climate justice.

Text: Kunsthalle Recklinghausen

Christian Schwartz started sketching Control in 2017. Its first appearance was in a special publication produced by Interview for Art Basel Miami in November 2022. Commercial Type made the font family available for early licensing from their Vault in October 2023, and officially released it in June 2024. It was just a matter of time before Control made its debut on Fonts In Use.

In spring 2025, NODE Berlin Oslo used it for the promotion of an exhibition at Deutsche Bank’s PalaisPopulaire in Berlin, curated by Liberty Adrien and Carina Bukuts and titled It’s Just a Matter of Time.

The designers didn’t work with the core styles – Control Upright and Italic – that were inspired by the sans serif examples in Walter Käch’s 1949 lettering manual Schriften Lettering Écriture. No, it’s a bold weight from the collection’s third branch, Control Cursive. This alternative italic was drawn by Miguel Reyes, loosely inspired by the 1980s Letraset face Van Dijk.

Secondary text on the poster is set in the patron’s custom typeface by supertype, simply named Deutsche Bank. The artwork is Rosemarie Trockel’s Untitled (Schizopullover) from 1988.

The first physical release of Collisions.cc takes the form of a limited 12″ vinyl with a foldable 24×36″ poster. The edition features an original orchestral composition by Beni Brachtel, created for Ersan Mondtag’s installation Monument eines unbekannten Menschen in the German Pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale, 2024.

The design employs an early version of Hagel Regular, a contemporary serif typeface by scifipoetry, to set the textual elements of the sleeve and poster. The typeface’s sharp detailing and calm rhythm complement the layered themes of memory, architecture, and sound that shape the installation.

Source: chroniclingamerica.loc.gov US Library of Congress: “Chronicling America”. License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: chroniclingamerica.loc.gov US Library of Congress: “Chronicling America”. License: All Rights Reserved.

This ad in The Salt Lake Herald., April 18, 1880, demonstrates the ingenuity of late nineteenth-century typographers. Given the cost of producing and printing engravings, newspaper ads rarely used illustrations at that time. So companies sometimes turned to type to draw attention and express themselves. This layout evokes rug patterns and borders as if seen from overhead in a floor plan, grabbing the eye on an otherwise dense page.

The designer put three very different typeface styles to use: The “Carpets.” at top and bottom appear to match MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan’s four-line pica Gothic, No. 3, a style we list as Grotesque No. 5 / 396–399. (The word at the top may use a C from a different font.) Meanwhile, the light and narrow Condensed No. 3 contrasts nicely with the extra broad and bold Title Extended. All of these typefaces were likely created within a couple decades before this printing. They originated at German or Eastern U.S. foundries and made their way across the country to Salt Lake City in time to show up in service of the Walker Brothers Carpet company.

You don’t know who Uli Huber is. Or, was. He’s dead. He was born on August 3, 1902, making him a Leo (if you care about such things). He died in 1981, but before that, he spent his entire career as a graphic designer in Germany, working on posters, packaging, advertisements, logos, and one published postage stamp. None of the companies he worked for had much of an international presence, so his work never really made it to the States. The handful of articles about him are in German. His one book, Werbung + Graphik (Advertising + Graphics) written with Eugen Johannes Maecker, is also in German. It looks interesting, but we can’t read it. A tribute book was published in 1969 when he retired from teaching at the State Teaching Institute for Graphics, Printing and Advertising in Berlin. Google translated it for us but we didn’t learn much–except that he’d been a student of F. H. Ernst Schneidler, one of the twentieth century’s great teachers of lettering and typography, and that “[h]e was tolerant even towards things that he rejected for himself because he saw the good in them.” So, a typical Leo. (Just kidding. We have no idea what Leos are known for. Don’t tell us. We do not care.)

Here’s Huber, though, sending out greetings for a happy and prosperous 1961 in four different languages. The little bit of type is set in Georg Trump’s Schadow. In the middle are two screen-printed figures he drew by hand and presented in two different directions. He was taking advantage of the fact that 19 can be can rotated 180 degrees and read as 61. (ChatGPT calls 1961 a “rotational mirror twin.” Google, however, doesn’t acknowledge the existence of such a thing.) The next time one would be able to pull of the trick of drawing just two numbers to write one year that has a kind of rotational symmetry is in the year 6009. See you then.

Originally published in Mercurius magazine (2024), this piece contextualizes how I approached my gender identity during the formative years of my childhood.

Brackets were used to produce a cocoon-like structure with letters containing the word “male” and an inner core encasing the text “fe-” representing my spirit.

Altogether, to embody the word “female."

From Session Victim:

Sidequests: Chapter One, the first part of a trilogy with subsequent EP’s featuring further explorations in creative rhythm and the nostalgic echoes of adventure!

Featuring four original tracks and a standout remix by underground hotshot Frits Wentink, Chapter One showcases Session Victim’s signature fusion of hazy house, broken beat, and trip hop—all wrapped in their trademark rich production and uplifting energy.

Alias Harbour is used for title type. It’s paired with a yet unidentified italic font [edit: it’s Perfetto, see comments].

Florestal is a restaurant by Bruna Martins, a renowned chef from Belo Horizonte, Brasil. Though not strictly a vegetarian restaurant, the menu puts its emphasis on plant ingredients – and so do the architecture and branding. The restaurant has a cozy “foresty” ambiance, using clay tableware and covering itself with plants both inside and outside.

The visual identity uses a few widths of Ferpa, always in capitals, and paired with Zilla Slab.

Artwork for Natalie Wildgoose and her new EP Come Into the Garden, alongside posters for her release shows at The Cardigan Arms in Leeds, and Servant Jazz Quarters in London.

A range of period typefaces are used throughout. For the EP artwork, Anglo-Saxon Caps is used for the titles and Seta Reta NF for the credits. The show posters use Schwarzkopf and P22 Arts and Crafts Hunter for headers, with a combination of Archive Garamond (bold italic), Madisonian Light, Skeleton Antique and News Gothic (medium, bold) for subheadings and body copy.

The Best of Sam & Dave is a compilation album by the American soul duo Sam & Dave, released in 1969 on Atlantic Records. The album includes some of their most iconic tracks, such as “Soul Man”, “Hold On! I’m Comin’”, and “I Thank You”.

The cover was designed by Stanisław Zagórski, using the Stencil typeface for the album title and the song selection.

[More info on Discogs]

Nouvelle Noire designed a custom type family for Theater Basel, which is a key part to the identity designed by Basel-based studio Claudiabasel
. Based on this particular typeface, Nouvelle Noire later crafted a publicly available retail version named Pivot Grotesk.

On this poster, Theater Basel Grotesk (now Pivot Grotesk) is paired with a serif typeface that’s also part of the custom typeface family. Dubbed Theater Basel Antiqua, this branch is exclusive to the theater at the time of writing.