Giovanni Mardersteig

The Biology of Horror by Jack Morgan, Southern Illinois University Press

Melissa Lewis — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 13:55:00 +0000

Contributed by Melissa Lewis

Source: www.siupress.com Southern Illinois University Press. License: All Rights Reserved.

The cover uses Talon for the title and Helvetica for the subtitle and author name.

The Biology of Horror: Gothic Literature and Film is an academic book that analyzes how anxieties about biology and being organic figure in the history of the genres, using both early (e.g. The Castle of Otranto, published 1764) and then-modern (e.g. Seven, 1995) examples.

Half-title page

Title page featuring Talon for the title and Dante for the subtitle and author name. The publisher’s name is in Gill Sans Bold.

Contents

This post was originally published at Fonts In Use

The Raven Steals the Light by Bill Reid and Robert Bringhurst

Ian Hooker — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 15:22:28 +0000

Contributed by Ian Hooker

Photo: Ian Hooker. License: All Rights Reserved.

Ten episodes from Haida mythology, told by Bill Reid (1920–1998) and Robert Bringhurst (b. 1946), are accompanied by drawings by Reid.

The result brings Haida art and mythology alive as never before in an English-speaking world.

First published in 1984 with different typography, this is the 1996 edition by University of Washington Press:

This new edition of a collaboration between one of the finest living artists in North America and one of Canada’s finest poets includes a new introduction by the distinguished anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss.

The text face is Dante, designed by Giovanni Mardersteig. Titles are in Comenius by Hermann Zapf.

Photo: Ian Hooker. License: All Rights Reserved.

Photo: Ian Hooker. License: All Rights Reserved.

Photo: Ian Hooker. License: All Rights Reserved.

Photo: Ian Hooker. License: All Rights Reserved.

Photo: Ian Hooker. License: All Rights Reserved.

This post was originally published at Fonts In Use

Martyr! book jacket

Stephen Coles — Mon, 11 Mar 2024 09:50:00 +0000

Contributed by Stephen Coles

Martyr! is a novel by Iranian-American writer Kaveh Akbar that combines modern situations with traditional imagery. For the jacket, prolific cover designer Linda Huang did what she does so well: pick a striking and relevant typeface and let it do a lot of the work.

Left: Salem, as advertised in the Inland Printer, Vol. 28, No. 2 (November, 1901). Right: Daria Cohen’s reinterpretation, Zangezi (2018), with additional weights, italics, and condensed (2021).

Her choice was Zangezi Condensed, a fresh, fashion-forward take on Salem, in which Daria Cohen took a turn-of-the-century dazzler, narrowed it, and increased its stroke contrast, giving it even more spike and sparkle than it already had. The idiosyncratic type is the perfect companion to the contemporary use of antique illustration. Huang also deftly delivers the commercial necessities – a blurb and “a novel” – in an inconspicuous way.

Huang on the design:

Despite its heavy themes, I found Akbar’s novel to be insanely funny,” Huang told Literary Hub. “I cackled many times while reading the manuscript. More than anything, I wanted to evoke this unique tragi-comedic tone on the cover. One of the central, recurring images is this Iranian ‘Angel of Death’ warrior. I experimented with scale and ultimately found the warrior in miniature to be most striking, with ‘a novel’ set in a deadpan speech bubble. I was also lucky to stumble upon the perfect decorative typeface to activate all that negative space. To me, humor is one of the most alluring qualities in a book (and really, in life) so it was an absolute treat to work on Akbar’s novel.

Source: www.penguinrandomhouse.com License: All Rights Reserved.

The version of the cover seen in bookstores today.

Martyr! quickly became a New York Times best seller – soon enough for the cover to get an extra speech balloon celebrating that fact. You can also see an improvement on the letterspacing in “Akbar”.

A Digression and Suggestion

Once you get to the end of a book, “a note on the type” is a great way to learn about the creation of the letterforms you’ve been staring at for hours.

Back jacket flaps usually include an author bio and designer credit. This is good. Could they include a bit more?

The interior of this book, designed by Betty Lew, includes “A Note on the Type”, a lovely hundred-year-old publishing tradition which not only credits the text face (in this case, Dante), but tells a bit of its story. Why not have a typeface credit on the jacket flap, too? Sure, you’re reading a lot more Dante than Zangezi when you read this book, but it’s the cover that often sells the book. Also, the type used on book covers is more likely to be something newer that the interior text, and thus more likely to be made by living designers. Isn’t it time we give them a nod?

This post was originally published at Fonts In Use

Tipoitalia 3

CAST — Wed, 21 Feb 2018 13:03:23 +0000

Contributed by CAST

The cover shows Landi Echo metal type from the collection of Tipoteca Italiana.

Initiated by Claudio Rocha and published by the Tipoteca Italiana, the third issue of Tipoitalia is entirely dedicated to 20th-century Italian typography. Fourteen contributors collaborated with the editorial team, made up of Sandro Berra, Massimo Gonzato, Riccardo Olocco and Claudio Rocha.

Titles and page numbers set in TIF Balilla. Summary and captions in Semplicità [digital revival by Studio Di Lena]

Contents and contributors

The cover of TipoItalia 3 and letterpress-printed insert by Archivio Tipografico are dedicated to Alessandro Butti. Traces of his personality and work appear in the articles by Enrico Tallone and Alessandro Colizzi, but his name also reappears on many other pages of this issue. It’s hinted at in Lucio Passerini’s overview of twentieth-century Italian type, in Michele Patanè’s critique of digital versions of a few Nebiolo typefaces, as well as in Riccardo De Franceschi’s piece on Veltro. And it pops up again in the pages written by James Clough (followed by Akira Kobayashi’s contribution on the genesis of Eurostile Next), which compares Novarese’s Eurostile with Microgramma and its other somewhat squarish predecessors. For this issue of TipoItalia Clough also covers an extraordinary selection of Fascist-era wall texts in an excerpt from his recent book Signs of Italy. Our journey through twentieth-century Italy also features Fortunato Depero’s bolted book [see the article on Fonts In Use], Carlo Frassinelli’s graphic design revolution, the vicissitudes of Francesco Simoncini’s foundry (now forty years after his death), and the rationalist saga of modular type, with texts by Gianluca Camillini, Carlo Vinti, Alessio D’Ellena, and Luciano Perondi. Type design and rationalism are also discussed in Mauro Chiabrando’s article on Reggiani and his foundry, whose special series of typefaces included Triennale. Claudio Rocha, in addition to the graphic design, is also the author of a reconsideration of vintage typographic decorations and ornaments.

Set in Zenon by Riccardo Olocco/CAST

Typography

Rocha set the texts in many different fonts with priority given to digital versions of historical typefaces discussed in several articles. These are: TIF Balilla, Semplicità, Paganini, Palatino Nova, Palatino Sans, Monotype Dante Pro, Mefistofele, Monotype Pastonchi Pro, Veltro, Egizio, Eurostile Next, FB Forma. Other texts are dressed in some very recent original fonts such as Brevier, Zenon and Gramma by Riccardo Olocco/CAST; Dic Sans by Luciano Perondi/CAST; GFT Lespresso Sans by Giangiorgio Fuga; Font Serif and Sans (unreleased) by Michele Patanè/Monotype.

Titles set in Dic Sans by Luciano Perondi/CAST; text in Zenon and captions in Brevier, both by Riccardo Olocco/CAST

Titles set in GFT Lespresso Sans by Giangiorgio Fuga; text in Zenon and captions in Brevier, both by Riccardo Olocco/CAST. See also the post about Depero Futurista.

Set in Palatino Nova and Palatino Sans by Hermann Zapf and Akira Kobayashi/Linotype

Titles and summary set in Semplicità by Alessandro Butti/Nebiolo [digital revival by Studio Di Lena]; text in Monotype Dante Pro [original font by Giovanni Mardersteig/Monotype]

Titles set in Mefistofele by Claudio Rocha and Lucas Franco [original font by Fonderia Reggiani]; text and captions in Gramma and Brevier by Riccardo Olocco/CAST

Titles set in Fluidum and Semplicità by Butti/Nebiolo [digital revivals by Monotype and Studio Di Lena]; text in Paganini by Butti/Nebiolo under direction of Raffaello Bertieri [digitally revived by Canada Type]

Set in Monotype Pastonchi Pro [original font by Francesco Pastonchi and Eduardo Cotti]

Titles set in the author’s digital version of Veltro Nera; text in Egizio by Aldo Novarese/Nebiolo [digital version by URW++]; captions in Semplicità by Alessandro Butti/Nebiolo [digital revival by Studio Di Lena]

Set in Eurostile Next by Akira Kobayashi/Linotype [original font by Aldo Novarese/Nebiolo]

Titles and text set in FB Forma by David Jonathan Ross/Font Bureau; captions in Brevier by Riccardo Olocco/CAST.

Set in Font Serif and Sans by Michele Patanè [not yet released]

This post was originally published at Fonts In Use