The L-1011 TriStar was an early American wide-body, trijet civil passenger airliner designed and manufactured by Lockheed Corporation. Introduced in 1972 with launch customers Eastern Airlines and Trans World Airlines (TWA), the L-1011 was produced until 1983 and flown by major carriers around the world through the 1990s.

Shown here in manufacturer livery, the empennage uses Motter Tektura (with custom capitals) to indicate the marketing name of the aircraft. A bold Eurostile marks the manufacturer and model number on the fuselage (and probably the smaller registration indication, as well).

Issue no. 2 from July 1981. The white text at the bottom is an unidentified typeface similar to Futura Extra Bold Condensed. I wonder if it’s related to Heraldus. [edit: identified by Bryson as Tempo Black Condensed]

Motter Tektura is the logo typeface for Your Computer. The Australian monthly home computing magazine “for business and pleasure” ran from May/June 1981 to May/June 1997. From 1977 to 1984, Othmar Motter’s typeface was also used for the logo of the Apple Computer Inc., likewise in all-lowercase letters.

Initially edited by Les Bell and published by the White House Publishing Group under licence from Motorword Pty Ltd., Your Computer was typeset by Hughes Phototype, Mosman. and printed by The Lithgo Centre, Waterloo. Barry Brady served as the magazine’s first art director. In 1982, he was superseded by Michelle Mabbott. Rolf Hagenmaier filled this role in 1993.

By 1994, the logo had been redrawn (almost) beyond recognition.

You can browse many digitized issues in the Internet Archive.

Motter Tektura was also used as headline typeface on interior pages. Here’s the table of contents from no. 5, November 1981.

June 1982, with ITC Korinna in a starburst for the “Big Birthday Issue”. The logo got a contour.

October 1982, ft. Dynamo Shadow for “16 Bits – A Revolution?”

May 1983

June 1983

September 1983

“Learning With Your Computer” special issue, 1986, with a shaded logo version and ITC Avant Garde Gothic

February 1993. The claim below the logo now reads “Making your micro work”.

Othmar Motter’s Tektura, set tight-not-touching with a fortunate distribution of its ascending and descending glyphs, for an album by Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997), released in 1981 by Folkway Records:

Legendary Beat poet Allen Ginsberg explores the fusion of poetry and music in this rare 1970s recording. Called a “venerated bard of resistance” Ginsberg sought “how the raw mind actually works” through poetry. This collection of fun ditties spouts against capitalism, among other things, and is an amusing and enjoyable listen. Ginsberg accompanies himself with a small hand-pumped harmonium from India, occasionally adding his own guttural rhythms reminiscent of Dadaist sound-poetry (see for example “Put Down Your Cigarette Rag” and “Prayer Blues”), while other songs, such as “Bus Ride Ballad Road to Suva”, echo folk ballads from yesteryear. Ginsberg prefaces each song himself. Liner notes include an introduction from Ginsberg.

[More info on Discogs]

The copy digitized by the Internet Archive has slightly different colors.

ToneMaster is a brand of audio cassettes made in China. The logo makes use of Motter Tektura (1974). The text on the cassettes and the wrappers is set in a range of standard typefaces like Helvetica, Times New Roman, and ITC Avant Garde Gothic Condensed, in various styles including italics. Specialist website Cassette Comeback mentions 1989 as the estimated year of production. According to Tape Fans, the ToneMaster cassettes were still in production in 2010.

The AOS-100, made by Best Elektronik A.Ş., is a school bell timer/clock made for use in PA-integrated school bells that are used in Turkish public and private schools. It has 23 preset monophonic melodies, with additional functions such as playing the Turkish national anthem (İstiklal Marşı) and bells manually, automatic bell, announcement, holiday setting with one key, holiday mode, announcements, weekly lesson programs, automatic holiday days and a monochrome LCD display.

The device used Donald Handel’s Handel Gothic for information text. The Best logo is based on Othmar Motter’s Motter Tektura.

Variant with MP3 player and USB support

This album of folk music from Bhutan was compiled and annotated by Johann S. Szuszkiewicz and published by Folkways Records in their Ethnic Folkways Library in 1978.

Cover designer Ronald Clyne combined two typefaces of contrasting weight which both came out in the 1970s: “Bhutan” is in Motter Tektura (1974), with its descending B and a quadruple underline. The hairline grotesk is the Thin (a.k.a. Ultralight) weight of Helvetica. Issued by the Haas foundry in 1970, it’s even lighter than the Light (or Leicht) from 1966. Linotype’s digital version doesn’t cover this weight, but Neue Helvetica (1982) includes an equivalent as Ultra Light.

[More info on Discogs]

Bratislava Jazz Days was “founded in 1975 by amateur jazz enthusiasts, most notably Peter Lipa, and later developed into a festival attended by world-class jazz players.” [Wikipedia] In addition to Czech and Slovak artists, the lineup of the 1980 edition included musicians from Poland, Hungary Great Britain, East Germany, the Soviet Union, Switzerland, Bulgaria, and France.

In the first years, Slovak designer Ján Meisner did the covers for the double LP series with live recordings from the festival performances. For the 1980 release, he showed an erupting metronome volcano. The name is in Motter Tektura, framed by a line that extends from the letterforms.

[More info on Discogs]

Speno EMD F40PH-2M No. 101, Coquitlam, British Columbia, 20 Sep. 1987

A very large application of Motter Tektura on the side of Speno’s locomotives. Speno is a rail service company specializing in grinding, measuring, and inspection of rail tracks. Looking at other photos of Speno equipment, the earliest occurrence of this logo is from 1982. Don Ross has more information about the company and their machinery. Speno is still in business, but they don’t use Motter Tektura anymore, which is a shame.

Speno RMS-1, Pittsburgh, PA, 6 March 1983

Speno RMS-109, Syracuse, NY, 1983

Speno 201, Nov. 1985

Detail from an undated brochure for Audiolabor’s fein MM preamplifier.

Audiolabor was one of the first manufacturers of high-end audio equipment in
Germany. Between ca. 1976 and 2003, some 5,000 amplifiers were sold. Developer Helmut Brinkmann had designed the logo himself. He based the all-lowercase wordmark on the Letraset version of Motter Tektura, with a customized round l. Audiolabor started using this logo around 1977.

Othmar Motter’s design was a popular choice for logos in the tech sector, most prominently for the original Apple logo (1977). Other examples include Ricochet’s Pong console (1976) and Steinberg, a German manufacturer of audio software (1980s). This legacy has been referenced in contemporary uses, see e.g. The True Story of Megaverb (2019).

Audiolabor’s flink preamplifier (front).

Audiolabor’s flink preamplifier (back).

Audiolabor’s flink preamplifier (interior).

Audiolabor remote control.

One of the most iconic in-use examples of Motter Tektura, next to the use by Apple, is the classic Reebok logo introduced in 1976. We have previously documented the various logo variants, on shoes, shirts, and stickers.

This post shows a longsleeve produced by Reebok around 2014, highlighting the logo’s initial letter. The R shows several of Tektura’s defining features in a nutshell: uncompromising monolinearity, sporadic stencil-like gaps, and single descending stems.

The image was made for an editorial for Vice Magazine Italia.
Photography: Alberto Moreu with Federico Ferrari
Stylist: Riccardo Linarello
Assistant stylist: Michela Meni

Previously known as Gasthaus Zur Sonne, this building served as inn and as movie theater. In 1974, it was converted to a cultural center and event venue with a focus on youth care, first run by the Catholic parish and later by the municipality, and renamed to Seezentrum Hard. [Gemeindearchiv Hard]

The names painted in all-lowercase Motter Tektura (1974), a typeface by local designer Othmar Motter, were added sometime after 1975.

The photos were kindly provided by Triest Verlag. Earlier this year, Triest has published the long-awaited Motter biography, edited and designed by Elias Riedmann and titled Othmar Motter – Meister der Extrabold (“Master of the Extrabold”).

There seems to be a rule saying that Motter Tektura can’t be used without any customizations. By default, and unlike e or d, the u doesn’t have a gap.

This picture was taken sometime between 1975 and 1990.

Othmar Motter and his studio Vorarlberger Grafik have left a lasting mark upon the visual landscape of their home state of Vorarlberg, Austria (and far beyond). The identity of Pfeiffer GmbH & Co KG, a scaffolding company located in Lauterach (a neighboring town of Hard) and established in 1976, is no exception.

The logo is based on Motter Tektura. The P descender was elongated, and the e extended to connect to the following letter. In some applications, the double f gets a descender as well. Via this logo, Tektura even made it to the top of Hard’s church, among other places.

The photos were kindly provided by Triest Verlag. Earlier this year, Triest has published the long-awaited Motter biography, edited and designed by Elias Riedmann and titled Othmar Motter – Meister der Extrabold (“Master of the Extrabold”).

LP cover (front)

Motter Tektura is used for Mechanical Fantasy Box, a collection of 13 unreleased songs by Patrick Cowley (1950–1982), recorded between 1973 and 1980, and released by Dark Entries Records in October 2019.

The double vinyl LP comes housed in a black and white gatefold jacket designed by Gwenaël Rattke featuring a photograph by Susan Middleton, an essay from bandmate Maurice Tani, and an 8.5×11″ insert with notes. […] [It is] released in tandem with Cowley’s homoerotic journal of the same title. […] — Dark Entries Records

Tektura was designed by Othmar Motter in 1974. It was popularized through the use by Reebok (1976), Apple (1977), and Trapper Keeper (1978), and later also appeared for the logo of audio software producer Steinberg. The sci-fi face is a brilliant choice for a throwback to the late 1970s/early 1980s in general, and for a pioneer of electronic dance music in particular.

It comes with a number of unusual letterforms, like the single-legged A or the headless S. Its w/W might be the hardest to swallow (unless you happen to aim for a pretzel-themed identity). This album cover features not one, but two substitutes for the unwieldy glyph. The artist’s name includes a customized form with diagonals that might have been made from a double v. The track list on the back cover shows another, simpler, and more convincing approach: The w in “breakdown” is an upside-down m.

Read more about Cowley and the Mechanical Fantasy Box.

LP cover (back)

Softcover. Tektura’s descending s is hyper-extended to form an underline.

The text face used in the journal is ITC Korinna.

Hardcover, made in a limited edition of 100 copies.

VHS, rainbow stripes, and Motter Tektura … if this isn’t worthy of our 1980s tag, I don’t know what is!

This cover for a blank T-120 VHS tape by Rainbow™ Magnetics was posted in August 2016 on Max Winston’s VHS Cover Junkie Tumblr. A year later, it was prominently referenced in the album art for Orphans by Aphex Twin (Warp, July 2017).

Most of the white text is in Helvetica. The VHS logo uses Lee, see the dedicated post on Fonts In Use.

If you’re into blank VHS tapes, make sure to check out Matthew Jones’s collection at Vault of VHS, and read Madeleine Morley’s article about it on AIGA Eye on Design.

An early use of Motter Tektura for the cover of a record with piano interpretations by Sergei Prokofiev, both released in 1974.

His own Love for Three Oranges, Tales of the Old Grandmother and 7 other selections, plus compositions by Rachmaninoff, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Mussorgsky, Scriabin, Miaskovsky and Glazounov.

The typeface with the exotic blocky letterforms – especially notable in the capitals – might have been chosen to hint at the musician’s Russian origin without having to use actual Cyrillic characters.

It may look like Tektura’s A was modified for a snug combination with the L. In fact, it’s just tightly spaced. This letter doesn’t have a full left leg by default.

The brown type is Radiant Heavy. Graphic design by Tri-Arts [Discogs], with illustration signed by “T. Rigsby” (?).

Outwards Journeys is a more recent example for Tektura used in all caps on a record cover.

Player 1’s console, with game options setting switches. The source video explains what they do, if you are curious.

This Pong console was featured on episode 89 of the Angry Video Game Nerd. The first five pictures were extracted from this video, which is the highest quality photography I have found of it. The others stem from eBay auctions.

The logo features Motter Tektura and all other on-console text is in Univers. The logo adds a swish around the tittle, reinterpreting it as the Pong ball from the game. The box also uses Univers for all body text and features the same logo, but with the addition of a tagline (“Electronic, color, TV game center”) in Cut-In. The tagline is repeated in Futura Bold in a green field on the box. The manual adds the company name under the logo, in what appears to be Eurostile Extended. From The Angry Video Game Nerd:

Well, this is excessive. Instead of two controllers, let’s have two consoles! Aside from the clunky design, the game works okay, except the right controller’s a little jittery. That’s what happens – the thing about these Pong consoles, and one of the things that make them so fun to play, is that the paddles move so fluently. It’s like an analog control that doesn’t exist in games today. The downside is that they break easily, and sometimes you get this jittery movement.

Player 2’s console. Player 2 does not get to change the settings, but controls the sound switch.

In-game footage, with bespoke bitmap typeface displaying the score.

Knob detail. All four games are variants of Pong, of course.

Both consoles in the same picture at once. Player 1 is right and Player 2 is left.

Top of the box, with good view of all the fonts. The in-game screenshots might also show more numerals from the bitmap font, assuming they are accurate – they seem somewhat stylized.

Box detail with better view of Cut-In and Motter Tektura, as well as of the illustration. The final C in “ELECTRONIC” and the E in “GAME” show the alternates with elongated bottom parts. CT, EN and ER are spaced so tightly that the letterforms touch.

Owner’s manual, featuring text in Univers and a model number in Futura Bold. The logo featured here, and in the warranty booklet, has the company name in Eurostile under the logo. The illustration from the box is repeated, but in a black-and-white version.

An auction photo with everything together.

Lemon Motter Tektura with its trademark descending s and a wavy (custom?) hyphen, used for the sign of a jeweller in Berlin-Spandau. “Juwelier” appears to be in a version of Palace Script. See more yellow signs from this city in Berlin Typography’s color focus post.

A promotional video for Megaverb, a digital reverb plugin based on “bad” digital reverb sounds from the 1980s and 1990s. Watch the full video here:

You can read more about the process of the video on goodhertz.co.

Two of the typeface selections made for the video were inspired directly by posts here on Fonts in Use. The pixellated Motter Tektura (Othmar Motter, 1974) was inspired by the 1985 game Paradroid, and the captions were set in Crillee (Dick Jones, 1980) after some browsing-by-year, which led to the “Star Trek: The Next Generation” closing credits.

Italics from Computer Modern Serif (Donald Knuth, ca. 1985)

Eskapade Fraktur (Alisa Nowak, 2012)

Forma DJR (David Jonathan Ross, 2016; originally by Nebiolo, 1968) in all caps, with outline effects and the alternate forms for G and R (not pictured in this image).

Rage Italic (Ron Zwingelberg, 1984) in pink. Captions throughout the video are set in Crillee (1980).

More Rage Italic, mixed with Senator (Zuzana Licko, 1988).

License: All Rights Reserved.

License: All Rights Reserved.

License: All Rights Reserved.

From Wikipedia:

Paradroid is a Commodore 64 computer game written by Andrew Braybrook and published by Hewson Consultants in 1985. It is a shoot ’em up with puzzle elements and was critically appraised at release. The objective is to clear a fleet of spaceships of hostile robots by destroying them or taking them over via a mini-game.

Paradroid uses a stylised Data 70 for its title and Motter Tektura for everything else (credits, status, score).

Source: www.flickr.com Rain Rabbit. License: CC BY-NC.

Source: www.flickr.com Kevin Simpson. License: CC BY-SA.

Label for a 7″ by Misae Enomoto ( 榎本美佐江) / Ichiro Funabashi (船橋一郎), Victor ‎MVK-1056. Issued in 1975, this was one of the first records to use the newly introduced logo.

In 1975, Victor Japan introduced a new logo with letterforms derived from the Motter Tektura typeface which was released shortly before. The aperture of V was opened up a bit; c, t and r were widened and got diagonal top terminals. Motter Design lists the logo as a design by its precursor, Vorarlberger Grafik, i.e. the studio co-founded by the typeface’s designer, Othmar Motter.

From Discogs:

Victor was a prolific classical, opera, pop, jazz, blues and country label launched circa 1901 in the USA by Victor Talking Machine Co. In 1929, the company was bought by RCA. In 1946, the Victor label was replaced by the new RCA Victor label in most of the world. In Japan, however, the Victor label continued to exist; currently it is owned by Tokyo company Victor Entertainment, Inc.

The Victor Company of Japan, Ltd is usually referred to as JVC. Wikipedia: “JVC is generally known within Japan by the Victor brand, preceded by the His Master's Voice (HMV) logo featuring the dog Nipper.”

Top: “Victor” in Motter Tektura. Bottom: The Victor logo with adjustments.

Inner sleeve from フリフリ’65 by Southern All Stars (1989)

Inner sleeve of a soundtrack record for Kimagure Orange Road, “Panic in Okinawa” (1985)