Cover for the edition by Mandarin Publishers, Hong Kong / UK

The Mysterious World of Dinosaurs is a non-fiction book written by John Heritage and illustrated by Francis Phillipps and others. It was originally published in 1980 by Octopus Books, London, for WH Smith. The ravages of time have left their mark on Helvetica.

Title page from a 1983 reissue by Treasure Press, ft. Trooper Roman. The small print is in Times New Roman.

Table of contents ft. ITC Caslon No. 223 and Univers

Chapter beginning with the heading in ITC Caslon No. 223 Light. The text typeface is Century Schoolbook.

Vol. 33, no. 3 from September 1970 was the first issue to feature the new design.

Popular Electronics was “started by Ziff-Davis Publishing Company in October 1954 for electronics hobbyists and experimenters. It soon became the ‘World's Largest-Selling Electronics Magazine’ […] Popular Electronics was published until October 1982 when, in November 1982, Ziff-Davis launched a successor magazine, Computers & Electronics.”

Vol. 33, no. 3 from September 1970 introduced a new design, featuring Trooper Roman for the logo and as the main display typeface on the cover, accompanied by various styles from Venus. Editor Oliver P. Ferrell commented on the new look:

Regular readers of Popular Electronics can scarcely fail to notice that many important changes have been made in this issue. Not only do we have a new logo design, there will be more technical content, more news, more state-of-the-art reporting, more new product mentions, improved typography and layout plus many other minor editorial additions and changes. The purpose of our “new look” in this magazine has been to aim its editorial content toward the electronics experimenter whose hobby interests are serious, challenging, and extraordi-narily motivated.

At that time – and until the end of the magazine – Edward I. Buxbaum served as the art director.

In January 1972, Electronics World (until 1959: Radio & Television News) was merged into Popular Electronics. The process started in the summer of 1971 with a new editor, Milton S. Snitzer, replacing the longtime editor, Oliver P. Ferrell. This is the cover of Popular Electronics including Electronics World, vol. 1, no. 1. The double name was abandoned again in January 1974. Additional typefaces include Filmotype Flyer and News Gothic.

Vol. 7, no. 1 from January 1975 is arguably the most famous issue. From Wikipedia:

[It] had the Altair 8800 computer on the cover and ignited the home computer revolution. Paul Allen showed that issue to Bill Gates. They wrote a BASIC interpreter for the Altair computer and started Microsoft.

The secondary typefaces are ITC Grizzly and News Gothic.

Vol. 20, no. 10 from October 1982 was the last issue under the name Popular Electronics. Content teasers are set in ITC Avant Garde Gothic Condensed. The letterforms of Trooper Roman aren’t squooshed as in the previous issues.

Vol. 20, no. 11 from November 1982 was issued under the new name Computer & Electronics, formerly Popular Electronics. The use of Trooper Roman for the logo was continued by Computers & Electronics until the final issue in April 1985. The sans is Helvetica.

Lords of the Earth is the title of Jules Loh’s history of the Navajo, published in 1971 by Crowell-Collier Press with a foreword by Peter MacDonald, Chairman or the Navajo Tribal Council.

For the jacket design, Walter Harper combined stacked and interlocked Trooper Roman with equally tight-spaced caps from News Gothic and a photograph of Tsé Bii’Ndzisgaii – Monument Valley. The interior design is uncredited. It uses Neuland licht with Futura Light for the title page and chapter beginnings. The text typeface is Rudolph Ruzicka’s Primer.

Advertisement for Johnnie Walker Red Label whiskey, published in the October 28, 1971 issue of Jet magazine. The headline and main copy are set in Trooper Roman with the small print set in Trade Gothic.

Compilation with tracks by Larry Elgart, Al Hirt, Ralph Flanagan, Perez Prado, King Curtis Combo, Jean Goldkette, Richard Maltby, Bob Scobey, Tito Puente, and Aaron Bell Trio, released by RCA Special Products in 1972. From the back cover:

Having a party? A good way to get everyone in the right mood is to play this party record created especially for a swinging soiree.

The title typeface is David Trooper’s Trooper Roman. “Special Collectors Edition” is added in Helvetica caps.

[More info on Discogs]

Toledo Serial in use on a German poster for Endless Poetry (Spanish: Poesía sin fin), a 2016 French-Chilean drama film directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky. While the film’s plot is set around 1950, designer Miro Denck embraced a late-1960s/early-1970s aesthetic, both in regard to the illustration and the type choice.

Toledo is the name used for digitizations of Trooper Serial, which in turn is a revision and expansion of a design by David Trooper, originally released around 1968 by VGC as Trooper Roman. Trooper Serial was made at Brendel / Typeshop in the 1980s.

[More info on IMDb]

enorm 06/2019 – “Make Love”

Enorm is a magazine for social change. It aims to encourage individuals by showing small steps that enable each and every individual to contribute, following the motto “The future starts with you”. In addition, it presents enormously inspiring people of action and their ideas as well as companies and projects that make life and work more sustainable and sustainable. Constructive, intelligent and solution-oriented, enorm is a journalistic print and digital project for a good life in a better world.

The magazine logo and headlines use Toledo Serial, paired with Whitman and Whitney for smaller text. The fifth image shows a spread using overprinted Adventure for quotes.

enorm 05/2019 – “Alles ist gesagt. Was tun?”

“First edition of Gould’s powerful challenge to views ‘of intelligence as a single thing, called IQ.’ Octavo, original half cloth, illustrated. […] Jacket design by Jay J. Smith.” — Raptis Rare Books

Trooper Roman and tight letterspacing were still en vogue in the 1980s.

Cover of the Capitol Records re-release

The 1970 record Songs Of The Humpback Whale is one of the most widely distributed field recordings. Since its inception, it has had at least 26 different reissues, including “translations” into German and French. The songs of the humpback are known to have soothing, almost sublime qualities. The same could probably be said for Trooper Roman, used here with the alternate two-storey ‘g’.

Cover of the original release with CRM Records ‎

“Commissioned as part of Offset's ‘Celebrating The City’ campaign, we were asked to create something for South William Street which has been the studio's neighbourhood since the start.

We worked with 10 creative people to write and illustrate a series of articles of imagined futures and creative interpretations for South William street from a number of different angles. The results were presented in a 2 colour, 8 page broadsheet which was handed out on a single day from make-shift vendor booths. And of course there was a website, because all newspapers need a website of they want to stay relevant.” — The 100 Archive

Trooper Roman with some uncommon swash alternates (or modifications).

A series of newspaper ads soliciting advertisers for Ebony Magazine.
Photography is by Irv Bahrt/Culver Pictures;
Copywriting by Byron Barclay and Herb Lubalin;
Client: Ebony Magazine/Wyse Advertising.

There is some ridiculous and sexist copywriting on these. The ad at the bottom is dated 1978. The others are undated but must be from around the same time.

Published in 1978, according to the source: elbloggo de mango.

The New Republic:

Chip Kidd, who designs book covers for Alfred A. Knopf, told me that the book appears to him to be “from around 1972.” It’s not a compliment. “For me it’s sort of like everything that I react against when I'm designing a book cover,” Kidd said. “I just don't understand why they would go with this route.” He added that, for a book like Dunham’s, he would think, “you would want to send the message that it's fresh, uncharted territory, and I just don't get that from this.”

Kidd is right on — as far as the stylistic period is concerned. Trooper Roman, which was the basis for the Toledo typeface used on this cover, was released by VGC in the early ’70s. The typeface was fairly common in phototypesetting days (see this ad for Jim Beam, a campaign for jump suits, and a Christian paperback) but virtually disappeared from use by the ’90s. This was likely due to changing fashions (high contrast, slightly wonky poster serifs gave way to Grunge and Neo-Classical type), but also because Trooper was hard to find in digital form. The availability of Toledo, a phototype follower of Trooper, alleviates that absence.

I disagree with Kidd, however, about the decision to use type like this for Dunham’s cover. I think it’s brilliant. It may not be “fresh, uncharted territory”, but it will stand out on the shelf simply because it is so clearly of another time. No other title on the “New Books” display will be like it. And, more importantly, it fits Dunham’s penchant for mid-century literature while reflecting her own offbeat personality.

The TNR piece goes on to discuss the type on the Lizzie Skurnick covers, which we’ve also covered here.

Read more about the design from CHIPS themselves.

This is a book published by Crossway Books – a publisher of evangelical Christian books – in 1986; there are no design credits.

From Montague Project’s Flickr stream.

“Familienmacher” (Family Maker) was an exhibition held at the Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art in Vienna from November 12, 2011 through March 25, 2012. Its subtitle translates to “To Hold on To, to Connect, to Get Rid Off”.

Who are you related to? Who takes the family pictures? How many of your kin are in your phone? Where do you store unloved heirlooms? Where to put the photo of the baby-bump? Whose picture to put into the frame? Does a family have a nationality? The exhibition is based on ethnographic research in the 8th and 16th district of Vienna.

Wolfram Wiedner studio created the identity and the exhibition graphics together with Johannes Lang. The exhibition interior and installations were designed by Kathrina Dankl. In 2012, “Familienmacher, Ausstellungsmachen”, an accompanying exhibition catalogue was released.

The exhibition logo is a purely typographic representation of the concept of family. The word Familienmacher is assembled of five diverse pieces, each of them set in a different and idiosyncratic typeface. None of them share a baseline, still all of them are united by the color red.

The selected typefaces include several of my favorites, many of them underused. Reporter is an energetic dry brush script from 1930s Germany. The marvelously angular Scriptek Italic is inspired by Russian Construcivism. While Goudy Sans hearkens back to the 1920s, the Bold Italic that is used here is a much younger addition. @typeentity:7718@ is a high-contrast display face from the 1960s, digitized under many names including Troover Roman and @typeentity:29655@. The last typeface does not only have the weirdest look, but also the weirdest name: Gneisenauette Black Alternate.

For everything else, the designers chose a very neutral face: Theinhardt is a revisited and refined Akzidenz-Grotesk by François Rappo.