Crystal Eyes Stalk at Midnight album cover

Album and promo art for Sean Wolcott’s 12th album, Crystal Eyes Stalk at Midnight. Macbeth is used as the primary display typeface, along with Harry supporting. Futura can be seen in the Clockwork Records logo, and Eurostile was used for the BGM logo along with the catalogue number.

For the promo posters, a variety of fonts were used including Nuevo Passion (a 2013 digitization of Mecanorma’s Contest), Cooper Black, and ITC Serif Gothic. Akzidenz-Grotesk Condensed is used for body copy throughout the cover and promo posters.

Crystal Eyes Stalk at Midnight vinyl with obi

Crystal Eyes Stalk at Midnight promo poster #1

Crystal Eyes Stalk at Midnight promo poster #2

Crystal Eyes Stalk at Midnight promo poster #3

Crystal Eyes Stalk at Midnight promo poster #4

Percy Faith’s I’ll Take Romance is a 1969 easy-listening compilation album released on the Harmony Records label. The title and artist name are in Davison Spencerian with the song list in News Gothic. The cover photo was taken by Walter Swarthout.

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The novelization of George A. Romero’s zombie horror classic Dawn of the Dead – the sequel to Night of the Living Dead – was co-written by Susanna Sparrow and first published by St. Martin’s Press in 1978.

Interestingly, jacket designer Paul Bruner used Davison Art Nouveau with the same alternates as on the covers of Frank Herbert’s Dune, as extensively detailed in The Mystery of the Dune Font here on Fonts In Use.

[More info on ISFDB]

Patti Page’s 1969 compilation album, titled Love Letters, was released on Harmony Records as a 12-inch LP in the US. The nine-song compilation includes tracks like “Stranger On The Shore”, “Born To Lose”, and the titular “Love Letters”. Her name and title is set in Davison Spencerian with News Gothic used for the song list

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All-lowercase Davison Epanoul with all-caps Helvetica, stacked and justified, for the cover of Ballantine’s 1971 paperback edition of Theodore Sturgeon’s More Than Human. The cover art is by Bob Pepper.

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Ad in LIFE magazine, October 11, 1968

New imaginative styles by Peter Max. Three wild designs to choose from. Repeat alarm wakes you – lets you snooze – then awakes you again. Daring and decorative – great gift.

Every time I come across a Peter Max work, whether it’s a pair of jeans (ad) or the cover of his own magazine—my eyes literally overdose on all the colors and swirling forms. Peter Max is not just another “hippie” artist, rather he’s a kind, caring and loving person who’s influenced a whole generation of artists and people abroad. Even if his name has never crossed your eyes or ears, you’ve probably seen his art somewhere. So many others around the world admire Max and his artwork, although these days it absolutely breaks my heart to see how others treat him in his current state.

Let's move on to something lighter… literally!

From 1968 to 1970, Peter Max was commissioned to design clocks and a poster for General Electric. The poster, advertising some absolutely wonderful wall clocks is set in Millstein Orientale for “New from General Electric” and below, with some Helvetica for the tinier text.

Moving on to the 1970 Snooz-Alarm clocks advertisement which shows Norton Futuramic, a Photo-Lettering face that was issued in the 1940s, paired with Obese E, a Psychedelitype (link two) released in 1967—note that this wouldn’t be the first or last time Obese would be used in Max’s work. Jefferson Aeroplane appears for the Symmetry clock, and Davison Arabesque for the Spectrum clock. Aura is just Futuramic, repeated, and below the three is presented in Futura for the price and bold words, Bodoni for the quoted text.

The actual Symmetry clock uses an illustrated form of Obese, Spectrum uses Art Nouveau-esque numericals not unlike Benguiat Laurent, and the Aura clock uses custom numerals not specific to any phototype… but still looks rad anyway!

Ad in Courier Journal, March 22, 1970

Symmetry

Spectrum

Aura (black version)

Flower Girl

Mantovani’s Golden Hits is a popular album of instrumental music, primarily consisting of arrangements of classical and popular tunes by the Italian British conductor and composer. It was released in 1967 on London Records. The title is set using Davison Epanoul in lowercase letters, with the song names added in all-caps News Gothic

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French edition of the single from The Stooges’ second album, Fun House, from 1970. Tom Copi’s cover photo captures the crucial moment Iggy Pop left the stage and walked on a sea of hands, while smearing himself with peanut butter. The combination of Contest (Mecanorma’s copy of Davison Psyche) and Charleston for the song titles is quintessential for the era, while the band name is a logo created by Elektra records art director William S. Harvey, as he had done for labelmates The Doors, Love, MC5 and others. It appears to be derived from Kabel Black.

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The Lovers Guide to Sensuous Astrology was written by astrologers and psychics Marlowe & Urna Gray and published by Signet in 1974.

Cover variant used for the tenth printing

… or the day the poor creature took revenge (but had to die itself nevertheless). This spoken-word album by Barnaby Conrad (1922–2013), himself an animal abuser, is about the death of Manolete, a Spanish bullfighter who was gored in a fight in Linares, Andalusia, in 1947. It was first released in 1957.

For the album cover of this 1971 reissue, designer Rhea Atkins paired Morris F. Benton’s Othello (1934) with a decorated nephew, Dave Davison’s Fandango Ornamental. The latter is used with several swash alternates and a lateral shade. The painting is by Carlos Ruano Llopis.

[More info on Discogs]

Detail from the back cover: “A reproduction of this album cover without typography is available”.
Who’d want a reproduction of this album cover without typography?! The typography is the only good thing about this.

Recordando a Arsenio is a compilation album with songs written by Arsenio Rodríguez, released in 1972 by Tico Records, and featuring various Latin artists such as Eddie Palmieri, Joe Cuba, Jimmy Sabater, Cortijo, Celia Cruz, Ray Barretto, and Tony Pabon. Chico Alvarez is credited as the album's designer, with the title being displayed in Davison Fandango, shifting from the uncommonly seen lowercase to capitals.

Below the title, an unidentified typeface is used for the artist names, meanwhile Times New Roman is used for the back.

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Strange Evil, 1979 [More info on ISFDB]

In 1979, Pocket Books reissued several novels by British fantasy writer Jane Gaskell (b. 1941). The series includes her debut, Strange Evil, which she wrote at age 14, the follow-up King’s Daughter from 1958, and three books from her Atlan saga. The covers all come with art by Boris Vallejo.

The uncredited title typography features Davison Bolero, with some of its descending alternates. Gaskell’s name presents a rare example of Bolero’s lowercase characters. Like the ornamented Fandango, Bolero was typically used exclusively in capitals.

King’s Daughter [More info on ISFDB]

Atlan [More info on ISFDB]

The City [More info on ISFDB]

Some Summer Lands [More info on ISFDB]

Bolero is also used on the book spines.

Album cover for The Flowering by the Charles Lloyd Quartet, released in 1971 on Atlantic Records. Designed by prolific album designer Haig Adishian using Davison Fandango Ornamental and a painting by Jacques Richez.

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A Child’s Garden of Grass started out as a handbook written by Jack S. Margolis and Richard Clorfene, first published by Contact Books in 1969. In 1971, it was adapted into A Child’s Garden of Grass (A Pre-Legalization Comedy), a long-playing record produced and directed by Ron Jacobs, along with Margolis.

Dave Davison’s Fandango is used for the title both on the album cover and on the paperback reissue of the handbook by Pocket Books, as well as for the promotional campaign. Fandango is similar to Davison Bolero, with noticeable differences – such as Fandango having additional ornaments in certain glyphs or double notches in letters such as O and D. Both Fandango and Bolero are modelled after Central’s Othello.

The album was art directed “in a joint effort” by Robert L. Heimall and William S. Harvey. John Balsley styled the photo. It features all kinds of topical items from marijuana plants, a hookah, tobacco crumbs, papers, and matchboxes to a Lady Justice scale, a package of Stoned Wheat Thins, pinback buttons, headphones, a can of air freshener with green leaves, and a Monopoly board.

[More info on Discogs]

There are some words at the top left of the back cover that use Smoke (“GRASS”), Flirt (“MARIJUANA”) and Karnac (“CANNABIS SATIVA”). Track list and credits are set in sober Helvetica.

Cover of the handbook as reissued by Pocket Books. The secondary typeface is (a phototype version of) Page No. 506.

Promotional poster by Elektra Records

A billboard on Sunset Strip, advertising the release of the album in 1971. Coincidentally, the Music Hall sign below uses a stylistically related typeface, Rubens.

Front and back of the gatefold LP

Davison Fandango was a popular choice for science fiction and fantasy books. Here’s another example for The Devil in a Forest, “a short novel by American writer Gene Wolfe about the conflict between Christianity and an earlier pagan religion in Europe during the Middle Ages.” [Wikipedia] First published in hardback by Follett in 1976, this is the cover fof the paperback edition by Ace Books from November 1977, with cover art by Richard Krepel.

[More info on ISFDB]

West of Eden is the first book in Harry Harrison’s Eden Trilogy. The first US edition was published by Bantam in 1984, with wraparound art by David Schleinkofer. The uncredited jacket designer used all-caps Fandango for the typography, mixing glyphs from its plain and Ornamental styles.

About the book:

In this brilliant acclaimed novel dinosaurs still rule the Earth. The cosmic catastrophe that ended the Age of the Dinosaurs 65 million years ago never happened. The evolution of the great reptiles continued, climaxing with the Yilanè, the most intelligent and advanced race on Earth. But when the onset of a new Ice Age forces them to cross the ocean to explore and colonize a vast contingent, they clash violently with a savage new breed of mammal that they have never before encountered. Mammals that walk erect, hunt and use crude stone tools – and weapons…

[More info on ISFDB]

Davison Fandango’s Ornamental style, used in all caps on the cover of Edward Pearson’s fantasy novel. The Pocket Books edition came out in 1974. No cover designer credited. The illustration is by Michael Gross.

From the back cover:

Chamiel is the sweeping saga of the Revolt of the Gods, in which Zareal the Black Angel and his hosts of Evil defy the eternal edict, invoking the wrath of the Lord and the forces of Michael the Vanquisher. And in which Chamiel, messenger between unearthly kingdoms, undertakes a bold and perilous exploit on behalf of his Lord.

The legend of Chamiel is a heroic fantasy in the tradition of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, a legend set in its own worlds of Earth and Paradise—and the twilight world between.

“The writing is surely excellent; many passages have a vivid unearthliness… Exotic yet coherent imagining … bold and unusual.” —C. Day Lewis.

[More info on ISFDB]

The Sorcerers is a 1967 British science fiction horror film directed by Michael Reeves, starring Boris Karloff, Catherine Lacey, Ian Ogilvy, and Susan George.

The One Sheet poster (27″×41″) for the US release features PLINC’s Davison Kaleidoscope. This variation of Dave Davison’s Impacta is distinguished by letterforms that are filled with a hypnotizing whirl pattern. A year after this poster was issued, in 1968, PLINC presented their Psychemat technique. It allowed the application of various similar psychedelic patterns to any suitable typeface design (see examples under the Psychemat tag). Kaleidoscope appears to be one of several precursors in which the effect is built in, and not applied in a second step.

Davison Kaleidoscope as shown in Photo-Lettering’s One Line Manual of Styles, 1971

Il tabarro (The Cloak) is a one-act opera by Giacomo Puccini. This recording featuring Leontyne Price, Placido Domingo, and Sherrill Milnes was released on RCA Red Seal Records in 1971. Erich Leinsdorf conducted the New Philharmonia Orchestra.

The title is set in all caps from Davison Moulin Rouge Gothic, filled with three colored stripes. The names of Puccini above and of the artists below use Helvetica, also in all caps.

[More info on Discogs]

Doin’ Our Thing is a 1968 album by Booker T. & the MG’s, released on Stax Records. The album showcases the band’s signature blend of instrumental soul, R&B, and Memphis groove, featuring tracks like “I Can Dig It”, “Expressway to Your Heart”, and “The Beat Goes On”. As one of the most influential instrumental groups of the era, Booker T. & the MG’s continued to refine their tight, rhythmic sound on this release.

The album cover was designed by Loring Eutemey, a frequent collaborator with Atlantic and Stax Records, featuring a photo by Peter Hujar. The title is set in Davison Display.

[More info on Discogs]

Track names and credits on the back are set in two weights of Helvetica. Backliner photo by Bill Kington.