A textbook example of “one typeface, one size”, featuring Walbaum. A Sort of Life is the first volume of the “long-awaited” autobiography by British novelist Graham Greene. First published in hardback by The Bodley Head in 1971, this is the paperback edition published as Penguin Books 3495 in 1972, with a cover design by Derek Birdsall.

Peter Buchanan-Smith chose pictures from photographer Todd Hido’s series Homes at Night and Landscapes for these seven volumes of the backlist of works by famed American writer Raymond Carver (1938–1988), published in 2009 by Vintage Books.

The two main typefaces here are Walbaum (author's name, quotes) and Filmotype Jefferson (book title). They are complemented by Knockout for the subtitles (“Stories”, “The Collected Poems”, etc.).

To accompany the release of the series, Vintage published on its blog a short but insightful dialogue between Buchanan-Smith and Hido—it's definitely worth the read.

Hunt Roman was designed by Hermann Zapf, at the suggestion of Jack W Stauffacher, as a display face for private use at the Hunt Botanical Library. The design was cut by Arthur Ritzel at the D. Stempel AG typefoundry at Frankfurt am Main, and cast by them in metal type at four sizes, 12, 14, 18 and 24 point. Over the past 60 years a very small number of letterpress printers (about six, including Zapf and Stauffacher) have owned fonts. This book follows Stauffacher’s text from his 1968 lecture to the Roxburghe Club where he meditates upon the nature of the typographic book. Hand-set in 18 point Hunt Roman with 24 point display and printed in an edition of 115 copies on papers from the German mill of Zerkall.

Italics are added from Berthold Walbaum, another of Stauffacher’s favourite typefaces at his Greenwood Press.

This reference book gathers some of the most influencing and most groundbreaking web design projects since the launch of the WWW (World Wide Web) in the early 1990s. The neat graphic package of the book is endorsed by the use of two members of the Relative family from Colophon Foundry. Relative Mono is used for headlines and folio, while the body copy is set in the proportional sans Relative. The typographic contrast is assured by using Monotype Walbaum for quotes.

Slowly rebuilding my collection after some significant losses and it is lovely to be rediscovering some of these - for many years, in the 1950s, the Public Libraries of the relatively small Borough of Leyton in east London issued information leaflets and booklets detailing the events and services offered. This included such exhibitions, events and clubs that took place either at Lea Bridge or Leytonstone Library.

The series are beautifully set and printed at a relatively local printer's, the Curwen Press, who were based a few miles over the borough boundary in Plaistow.

The copy features a rather odd and not exactly harmonious combination of two serifs from different eras: Ehrhardt, an old style in the Dutch Baroque tradition, and Walbaum, a German Didone. Anyway, the star on this cover is Festliche Ziffern. This set of “festive numerals” was designed by Hermann Zapf and produced by Stempel in 1950. A few years later, Zapf expanded the concept to capital letters, as Saphir (1953). Festliche Ziffern came in a range of sizes, but even the smallest one (24pt) has more detail in the ornamentation than Saphir.

First published by Schuster & Loeffler in 1910, this is a later edition of Der Hahn von Quakenbrück and other novellas by Ricarda Huch (1864–1947), from 1920. The cover typography pairs Walbaum Italic in all caps with Rudolf Koch’s Maximilian.

Double-sided promotional poster for the Typographic Summer Program. Letterpress printed in 10 print runs from hand-cut and laser-cut linoleum and Ludlow slugs. Quite a wild mix of type combinations, colors, stretched proportions and outlines—is it a poster against typographic pollution? Or is this typographic pollution itself?

Front Cover

Cover of the English edition of Vägmärken, a book by former UN secretary general, Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–1961). Walbaum is used in roman and italic styles, with rotated Albertus for “Faber paper covered editions”.

After the original Swedish version was published in 1963, the English translation came out in 1964. The translation was done by noted Swedish scholar Leif Sjöberg, and was refined by the poet W. H. Auden, who also wrote a foreword. This brought the book immediate literary notice, and even a front-page rave in The New York Times Book Review. It is highly regarded as a classic of contemporary spiritual literature. — Wikipedia

The Sydney Symphony Orchestra (SSO) is an Australian symphony orchestra that was initially formed in 1908. Since its opening in 1973, the Sydney Opera House has been its home concert hall and performs more than 180 concerts a year with some of the world’s most illustrious conductors and soloists. The orchestra’s current chief conductor is David Robertson. [Wikipedia]

The current brand identity was conceived by Sametz Blackstone Associates in 2013. The primary typefaces are Emtype’s Ciutadella and Linotype Walbaum. The former is mainly used in all caps. The latter often is featured with its italics. The logo is in lowercase letters from Benton Sans by Font Bureau.

Programme for the centenary of the Zurich University in 1933 (recto/verso). Designed by Atelier Fretz and set in Walbaum. This classical roman typeface was originally cut around 1803 but forgotten. It was rediscovered in the wake of the modern movement. Modernists appreciated the functional beauty of Justus Erich Walbaum’s design. The large blue caps might be from Firmin Didot, a revival designed in-house at Ludwig & Mayer in 1929, based on 18th century originals.

A Cohesive Whole

Your wedding is the perfect time to express who you truly are and what your relationship means. From your ceremony program and the signage, to the menu and individual place cards, each aesthetic element plays a key role in the overall experience of your guests.

http://www.maystormstudio.com

Identity and printed matter for the 60th conference of the European Federation of Envelope Manufacturers (FEPE), 5–7 October 2017, Marseille.

The Curwen Press of Plaistow, East London was a printing press known in the twentieth century for printing high-quality advertising material, although it began as a printer of religious publications. This 1936 advertisement for a special issue of a medical journal is very much of its time – minimal, with consistent use of two colours, and particular use of printed borders – the Curwen Press commissioned many custom borders for its own use around this time, as did Monotype. It’s reproduced in a 1938 article on the company in the magazine Art & Industry, digitised by IADDB. The article describes this as the cover of a folder and says that all the rules and decorations are "standard" materials.

The main heading face is Orplid, an attractively quirky shadowed set of sans-serif caps that was very popular in graphic design of the period. For the body text, most is in Walbaum, which had recently been revived by Monotype (although the Curwen Press had become known for using handset type from Berthold before that), and with a few lines of Baskerville italic. The lining figures in the largest lines in Walbaum are rather small, and I wonder if the compositor deliberately put in figures from a smaller size of font – looking at Monotype specimens their Walbaum revival seems to always have had lining figures that reach fully to cap height. The press continued to print publicity material in a similar style after the war, and specimens from 1938 and 1952 highlight Orplid as one of their main display faces.

Harold Curwen, then the company’s director, had studied with Johnston and drew his own Johnston/Gill-ish sans-serif. The Curwen Press anthology/history Songs and Words is a real pleasure to read if you can get hold of it, and contains many illustrations of similar jobbing work done by the company.

This book is a catalog for Splendeurs & misère: Images de la prostitution at the Musée d'Orsay. The exhibition explores the fascination of painters for the beauty and misery of prostitution, and how they find different pictorial ways to present it.

Valor Econômico is the largest financial newspaper in Brazil. It is based in São Paulo and was first launched in 2000. Back then three external designers worked on the project alongside with the newspaper art director, Silas Botelho, the Englishman Simon Esterson, the American John Belknap and the Scotish Ally Palmer.

Gerard Unger’s typeface Coranto 2, a refined newsface with distinctive character and clarity, is put to great use in titles and continuous text.

Collection Thomas Maier. License: All Rights Reserved.

From back when it was usual to address gentlemen only. Also note that the typewritten text doesn’t use the eszett. A lowercase ‘o’ is used in place of zero.

This letter accompanied a specimen of Akzidenz-Grotesk, sent to a printing plant in Karlsruhe which, unlike the H. Berthold AG, is still in existence. It is interesting to see that the Stuttgart branch of the “type foundry and brass rule factory” used a blackletter for their identity. The letterhead was likely designed some years before 1961, see the updated board of directors in the footer. In the 1950s and 1960s, this genre communicated tradition rather than reaction or provocation, and could very well serve as the “public face” of a type foundry.

Trump-Deutsch (1936) was already 25 years old at this point. This Gotisch was Georg Trump’s only blackletter design, and his second realized typeface after City (1930). While these two early families were released with Berthold, all his subsequent work, from Schadow Antiqua (1938) to Mauritius (1968), was published by the C.E. Weber foundry. Georg Trump died on this day 30 years ago.

Collection Thomas Maier. License: All Rights Reserved.

Collection Thomas Maier. License: All Rights Reserved.

Like the letterhead, the rubber stamp combines Trump-Deutsch and Walbaum-Kursiv.

As Indra Kupferschmid puts it, Trump-Deutsch and Walbaum make for a “perfectly fitting and little surprising combination for something German. Not that this particular one was a classic combo, but a strict roman and a blackletter is not something rare, and these two typefaces from the Berthold catalog combine very well. They are a good representation for where classic German mass taste in type was before mid-century modernism and outside of vernacular lettering.”

Over the past year, the National Museum of Toys and Miniatures in Kansas City, Missouri (NOT Kansas) has renovated its building, its displays, and its branding. 'Toys' ≠ 'Miniatures', so Design Ranch, also of Kansas City, emphasizes the differences between them with two typefaces and two colors.

Home Is Where … catalog for the final exhibition and symposium at Schiffshebewerk Henrichenburg

Canale Grande was an artists in residence project and symposium at Schiffshebewerk Henrichenburg organized by KunstVereineRuhr. The final exhibition showed works by the four artists in residence Ann Schomburg, Balz Isler, Heike Schäfer and Koji Onaka.

You can get further information about KunstVereineRuhr and Canale Grande at www.KunstVereineRuhr.de

Signange at Schiffshebewerk Henrichenburg. Canale Grande exhibition design by Tilda Studio, Foto: Roland Baege

Walbaum LT has been paired with Schelter Grotesk NF.

Canale Grande – visual identity for the artists in residence project and symposium of the KunstVereineRuhr at Schiffshebewerk Henrichenburg.

Canale Grande logo detail

Signange at Schiffshebewerk Henrichenburg. Canale Grande exhibition design by Tilda Studio, Foto: Roland Baege

Vintage signs by VEB Getränkekombinat Berlin (1969–1990), the publicly owned combine that provided East Berlin and the rest of the GDR with beer and soft drinks, spotted on Mitte’s Brückenstraße.

The name is set in Optima Bold. While “Berliner Biere” is presented in Fette Fraktur, a different blackletter face has been used for “Berliner Weiße”: Walbaum Fraktur. The eszett doesn’t use the compact form as included in the digital versions, but rather a literal – perfectly acceptable – ligature of ‘ſ’ and ‘z’.

The logo with the tray carrying bear has survived the German reunification, although the animal had to lose quite a few pounds to become fit for capitalism.