Cover of the original 1969 album, with “No 1” added in Helvetica

Starting in 1969 the BBC began releasing albums compiling sound effects from the BBC Sound Effects Library. A large number of albums would follow in this series, covering a range of themes and topics, with the last one being released in 1984.

For the first nine releases, a consistent design was used: A collage of images in a grid, tinted in a small number of colours to create a striking effect. For No. 1 to 6 and 8, the title was set in a two-color setting of Lettres Ornées. No. 7 and 9 instead use Stark Raving.

The first nine albums were later reissued with completely different cover designs. These new ones featured a different font for each release, which are covered individually below.

The design for the first four albums is credited to Roy Curtis-Bramwell. No designers are credited for the remaining albums or the reissues.

[More info on Discogs]

Volume 7, the first to use Stark Raving for the title. “No 7” is added in Univers Bold Condensed.

A compilation of all nine original album covers

The reissue of No. 1 features Warlock Inline.

Up & Down for the reissue of No. 2

The typeface chosen for the reissue of No. 3 is unknown. Perhaps Alpha?

Italia for the reissue of No. 4

The reissue of No. 5 uses Mickey Tick.

We get to see Napoli Serial for the reissue of No. 6.

Syncopation was chosen for the reissue of No. 7.

The new cover for No. 8 has broken glass and the elusive Brutus.

Lastly, the reissued No. 9 uses Stymie.

Wikipedia:

Sound Affects is the fifth studio album by the English rock band the Jam. The album was released on 28 November 1980 by Polydor Records. It is the only Jam album to be co-produced by the band themselves, and contains the only album track co-written by the entire band, “Music for the Last Couple”.

The cover art is a pastiche of the artwork used on various Sound Effects records produced by the BBC during the 1970s.

Jam frontman Paul Weller has opined that Sound Affects is the Jam’s best album.

Despite being a tribute to the BBC Sound Effects records, the album title uses a surprisingly different font: Vineta, in italic caps with shadow. “JAM” and “NO. 80” appear to be added in Univers Bold Italic. “POW!” is in Stencil. The artist and title on the back useEurostile Bold Extended, accompanied by Helvetica.

The back cover of the album features an excerpt from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem The Masque of Anarchy.

From Wikipedia:

The Terminal Man is a 1974 American horror science fiction film directed by Mike Hodges, based on the 1972 novel of the same name by Michael Crichton. Starring George Segal and Joan Hackett, the film centers on the danger of mind control and the power of computers.

The movie title uses Hiroshi Yamashita’s Alpha Midnight with select bits colored in red. The credits are added in caps from an unidentified (custom?) typeface with similarities to ABC Sans and Zarana.

When Bob Silverman designed the jacket for Maurice Yacowar’s book on the comic art of Mel Brooks, he chose Ruby Shadow for the title. He apparently deemed its M to be too tame for the topic. In any case, it got replaced by the sweeping glyph found in another bold 1970s script: the initials are taken from Charade.

Al Elliott’s Charade – a Canadian creation just like the book – did come with a Shadow style. The shadow was customized to match the one in Ruby Shadow, though. Printed in two colors, the alliterating title is combined with what looks like skewed caps from Venus. The all-caps roman at the top is Hess Old Style.

About the book, from the inner flaps:

The critics hate Mel Brooks. But does that stop him? When a Playboy interviewer once remarked, “You've been accused of vulgarity,” Brooks replied, “Bullshit!” No critic could ever stop Mel Brooks from being one of the best-loved comedians in film history—in fact, his movies consistently out-gross (in every sense of the word) those of much-praised Woody Allen. Mel Brooks is funny, and the people love him.

How does he do it? Is he really as crazy as he seems? Maurice Yacowar, whose previous book (on Woody Allen) received unanimous critical acclaim, takes us on a Brooks-lover’s tour through his work on television with Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows, his records as the “Two-Thousand-Year-Old Man,” and all of the films from The Producers to Blazing Saddles, from Young Frankenstein to High Anxiety. The resulting tribute will have film buffs nodding their heads nostalgically, and fans laughing out loud on every page.

Mel Brooks turned 100 years old today. Happy birthday!

Device from the front flap. Note the two forms for s in “Madness”.

Tite page. The book’s interior was designed by Dennis J. Grastorf using Caledonia.

First released in Jamaica in 1972 on Lee “Scratch” Perry’s own Upsetter label, this is the cover created for the 1973 UK release of Cloak & Dagger on Rhino Records. The design combines a bichromatic setting of Filmotype Quentin with fuzzy lettering for the artist’s name.

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Mitchell McCleary. License: All Rights Reserved.

Vinyl, front cover

Book of Paul is a 2026 album by Texan country artist Paul Cauthen.

The album art, single covers, and vinyl packaging were designed by Mitchell McCleary, with photography from Tyler Ellison.

McCleary wanted the design to feel like “a modern spaghetti western…something mythic, rugged, and cinematic…One part The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, one part Roy Orbison.” The design reverberates with classic Americana, but cleans it up so that it feels more contemporary than clichéd or nostalgic.

The word “PAUL” dominates the front cover, set in Job Clarendon’s heaviest weight in yellow with an orange shade. Other large settings of Job Clarendon appear throughout the design, including many of the single covers and video tile cards. According to McCleary, “it felt like cheating with how much heavy lifting the type did for the cover and interior.”

McCleary deployed URW Clarendon as a supporting slab, and Monotype Plantin for body text. A “Paul Cauthen” wordmark is set in BN Baxter Script, which also pops up on the cover of the single “Bayou By You”. Neue Haas Grotesk makes a small appearance in supporting text for the single cover for “Ain’t No Crime”.

[More info on Discogs]

Mitchell McCleary. License: All Rights Reserved.

Vinyl, back cover

Mitchell McCleary. License: All Rights Reserved.

Vinyl, interior

Mitchell McCleary. License: All Rights Reserved.

Vinyl, interior

Mitchell McCleary. License: All Rights Reserved.

Mitchell McCleary. License: All Rights Reserved.

Side A vinyl label

Mitchell McCleary. License: All Rights Reserved.

Side B vinyl label

Mitchell McCleary. License: All Rights Reserved.

Single cover

Mitchell McCleary. License: All Rights Reserved.

Single cover

Mitchell McCleary. License: All Rights Reserved.

Single cover

Mitchell McCleary. License: All Rights Reserved.

Single cover

Billards was drawn by John Theodore and added to the Photo-Lettering catalog in 1970. A year later, its “C” style – open letterforms with SW shadow – was chosen for the cover of an easy listening album by the Mystic Mood Orchestra. The thin sans is ITC Avant Garde Gothic, another 1970 release, used with alternates.

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Theodore Billards as presented in PLINC’s Art Deco booklet (Alphabet Directions No. 11) from 1970

In 1974, British budget label Starline released a series of compilation albums with songs from the early 1960s, recorded by unnamed musicians. The cover designs all come with a multicolored target and chromatic settings of Sans Serif Shaded. The number 16 appears to be custom drawn. The song titles are in Univers Condensed, set in all caps on a circular baseline.

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Fonts from the Flea Market #1459

Cruz Swinger Shaded in two-color use for a 1978 single by Argentine singer-songwriter Mario Rubén González Pierotti, better known as Jairo. The French song titles are added in caps from ITC Souvenir.

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These posters were created for Ignite, the opening event of SparkFest ’26 featuring Afro-Cuban jazz duo Okan. It uses Sundose throughout, taking advantage of the typeface’s bold forms and retro character at large sizes. Oversized headlines, layered shadows, and bright contrasting colors make the typography the dominant visual element, helping communicate the energy of the live music event.

Fairy Skate Princess Island is an animated island as seen in “Skate Night”, an episode of the critically, and commercially, unsuccessful Cartoon Network series Out of Jimmy’s Head, which was based on the live-action 2006 film Re-Animated, and was advertised as Cartoon Network's first live-action series (though, that honor goes to Big Bag in 1996).

In the episode, Dolly transports Jimmy to a magical place where everyone’s a princess, and Jimmy was humiliated from wearing a dress in cartoon form. But, Dolly wanted to teach Jimmy how to skate well to win Robin’s heart.

The fonts used for the title card are Musicals, a font produced by Brain Eaters Font Co., and Heartland. Musicals is used for “Fairy Skate Princess”, while Heartland is used for “Island”.

Source: rockers.de Rockers. License: All Rights Reserved.

The German sleeve for Althea & Donna’s 1978 hit single “Uptown Top Ranking” features four typefaces that were all available from Letraset at the time. None of them was an original creation by the English manufacturer of dry transfer lettering, though: Kabel Black (“Top Ten in England”) and Futura (“An Original Lightning Recording”) are adaptations of geometric sans serifs originally made as metal type in the late 1920. Neptun as used for the song titles is even older than that: it’s a revival of a turn-of-the-century oddity from AG f, a foundry in Offenbach, Germany.

Photo: Florian Hardwig. License: All Rights Reserved.

Style overview of the Yankee family as shown by Alphabet Photosetting in their 1984 catalog. Yankee Shadow here is listed as Yankee Outline Shadow.

The shaded slab-serif caps chosen for the artists’ names – here misspelled Althia & Donna – were released by Letraset just a few months earlier, in 1977. Yankee Shadow was drawn by Tony Geddes. It’s one style out of a family of eight, shown by Alphabet Photosetting in London. Yankee is a collegiate slab not unlike Tal Leming’s United Serif, Christoph Koeberlin’s Winner, and Weichi He’s LL Champion. The outward-facing unilateral serifs in its boldest styles remind me of City Bold as designed by Georg Trump in 1930. Unlike City, it’s drawn entirely without curves. In this regard, it’s similar to Aldo Novarese’s Colossalis.

Source: letraslut.com Letraslut. License: All Rights Reserved.

A sheet of 72pt Yankee Shadow for dry transfer lettering, issued in 1977 in Letraset’s Letragraphica range as LG2606. There was also a 48pt size. The Shadow style was the only one from the Yankee family to be adopted by Letraset. Scan courtesy of Letraslut.

Yankee Shadow was digitized at least twice: by Mickey Rossi as Jim Thorpe (2000) and by Nick Curtis as Sis Boom Bah NF (2007). To my knowledge, other styles from the Yankee family haven’t been revived yet.

You can read about Althea & Donna’s surprise hit on Wikipedia – and listen to it in the video below.

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West Bubble Gum’s Blockshadow style in bichromatic use for a matchbook by Holiday Inn, probably from around the mid-1970s: the slogan “Get that holiday feeling” was introduced in late 1974 by J. Walter Thompson.

“Get that” is set in squeezed Romana. “The World’s Innkeeper” uses PLINC’s Standard Intermediate Extended, a slightly narrower version of Akzidenz-Grotesk breit on the matchbook shown above. The ones below use the similar Venus Extended.

From Wikipedia:

Lost Continents: The Atlantis Theme in History, Science, and Literature is a study by L. Sprague de Camp that provides a detailed examination of theories and speculations on Atlantis and other lost lands, including the scientific arguments against their existence. It is one of his most popular works. It was written in 1948 and first published serially in the magazine Other Worlds Science Fiction in 1952–1953; portions also appeared as articles in Astounding Science Fiction, Galaxy Science Fiction, Natural History Magazine, and the Toronto Star. It was first published in book form by Gnome Press in 1954; an updated edition was published by Dover Publications in 1970.

The shown cover is for the 1975 paperback edition by Ballantine Nonfiction (24379), featuring two styles of Eightway in chromatic use, set on a circle. Cover artist unknown.

This printer’s trade card / business card from the 1870s was printed in three colors on gloss coated stock. It features five different typefaces. The bichromatic caps filled with stars and stripes are from Johnson’s National, designed by Julius Herriet, Sr. and patented 1856.

This is an exceedingly rare card, I only know of one example. Its exact date is unknown. Greenback, the bold upright cursive with split shade, was designed by Herman Ihlenburg in 1870 and patented by MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan a year later, so it can’t be any older than that. In 1879, one Robert Malcolm was publishing The Masonic Newspaper from the mentioned address at No. 49 Cedar Street, New York.

“Steam” is in Antique Extended and “New York” in italic caps from a Modern/Scotch. The grotesque used for “Near William” is unidentified.

For a second example of Civil War-era patriotic type, see the “God and Our Native Land” envelope. It features a typeface that is not exactly the same as the one shown here.

During the Civil War there were many many patriotic covers (envelopes) printed, both by the North and the South. This unused one from the “Know Nothing Party” uses a patriotic flag typeface very similar to the one used in the 1870s by Robert Malcolm, as did a number of Northern envelopes. It might be a different size of Johnson’s National – or a close follower – and was printed in two runs. Note how the two colors don’t align perfectly.

National was patented in 1856, and the Know Nothing Party was dissolved in 1860. The envelope thus is probably from the second half of the 1850s.

Step It Up Youthman is a 1979 album by Jamaican reggae singer Barry Brown (1957–2004), released with Paradise Records. It contains the eponymous song that became Brown’s first hit single. Cover designer Anum Iyapo – father of Shabaka Hutchings – used tightly spaced Quicksilver for the typograpy.

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From Daniel Frumhoff:

everyday utopia is a jacquard-woven blanket inspired by A Decolonial Feminism by François Vergès.

Yik Heng Lee (RISD textiles MFA) interpreted the digital design by graphic designers Jacob Marcus and Avrie Allen, indexing graphic pixels into woven structures and form.

Body glyphs are from Nat Pyper's typeface Michiyo Fukaya.

Erotica 74 is an adult book by Lawrence Mosley, published in 1974 by Bee-Line Books.

The title uses Green Buzzard B. The tagline and author’s name use Gill Sans Extra Bold. The publisher name, serial number and price use News Gothic.