Front cover, featuring Allegro (import revision; Ludwig & Mayer, 1936) for Berry’s name and the album title. “With” set in News Gothic (regular; ATF, 1908) or a follower. Catalog number (bold) and “Hi—Fidelity¬ (regular) set in Spartan (Linotype) or similar.

Still of Berry with his guitar taken from his performance in the independent film Rock, Rock, Rock! (1956).

After School Session is rockman Chuck Berry’s debut LP on Chess Records, the label’s second after the compilation/soundtrack album for the film Rock, Rock, Rock! (which Berry and two other Chess acts appeared in, resulting in a still from the movie being used on the cover). The album contained three previous hit singles, with “School Days” topping the Billboard R&B Best Sellers chart – after battling Elvis Presley’s “All Shook Up” in the Jockeys and Juke Box charts for three weeks – and reaching #3 on the Hot 100.

Though uncredited, the cover was presumably designed by Don Bronstein, Chess’ in-house art director from around 1955 to his death in 1968.

Back cover featuring artist and album name in Tempo Heavy (Ludlow, 1931). Smaller text including the track listing (bold with writer credits in regular), liner notes (regular), address (bold) and catalog number and “HIGH FIDELITY” (bold) all seem to be set in Spartan, a follower of Futura distinguished by the two-story a.

Strange to your Ears: The Fabulous World of Sound with Jim Fassett is an album originally released in the 1950s by Columbia Masterworks. Hosted by Jim Fassett, this album consists of a series of strange sounds presented in a peculiar manner, and has become a cult classic for its experimental nature.

The title typeface is Morris Fuller Benton's Franklin Gothic Extra Condensed contrasted with Century Expanded Italic. Other typefaces are also found in the dotted speech bubbles.

[More info on Discogs]

Bag of baking powder, “sufficient for 500 g of flour, to be stored dry and in an airtight container”. The use of Allegro (Ludwig & Mayer, 1936) suggests a date in the late 1930s or 1940s. Note the use of ligatures for ch/ck in both Allegro and the smaller text set in Belwe-Antiqua (Schelter & Giesecke, 1910).

Sign for a barber’s shop at Lokstedter Steindamm 31, Hamburg, spotted by Peter Glaab in 2019. Thanks to Google Street View, we know that the sign was already in place in 2008.

The reversed typography combines two typefaces that were both released in 1936, Allegro and Albertus. What’s more, the respective designers, Hans Bohn and Berthold Wolpe, were both students at the Technische Lehranstalten in Offenbach.

Bing Sings the Hits is a compilation of hit songs by Bing Crosby from the early 1950s. It was issued as a 10″ LP by Decca Records in 1954. Each of the eight titles is shown on a separate card—jukebox style—and is set in a different typeface. The selection provides a good sample of what was popular in the US in the 1950s, and also includes the less commonly seen Contact Italic (for “I Love Paris”). The titles are all presented in capitals, with the exception of “My Love, My Love”: Allegro with its cursive forms doesn’t lend itself to being used in all caps. (Barbara deWilde disagrees.)

[More info on Discogs]

In the phototype era, film font makers went bonkers with “flair” variations, appending swashes and hyper-extended glyphs to classic typefaces without discretion. Do these mutant growths work better with a scripty ball-terminaled display face like Allegro? I’ll let you be the judge, but it sure makes me want to grow some pineapple plants!

Allegro Flair from Lettergraphics: The Complete Library, Collectors Edition, 1976.

The cover of the Smash Hits prototype issue from September 1978 featured Plastic Bertrand and a logo in Antique Olive Nord Italic with dramatic drop shadow. The official No. 1 from November 1978 credits Ross George with the design.

The British pop music magazine Smash Hits ran from 1978 to 2006. From Smash Hits Remembered:

Smash Hits was founded in 1978 by Nick Logan, who had previously edited the New Musical Express during one of its most creative periods and went on to create ’80s fashion bible The Face. […] The backbone of the magazine in its early years, and one of its major early selling points, was the publication of Top 20 song lyrics. […] During this period, appearing on the cover of Smash Hits was a sign that an act had finally ‘arrived’. […] For most of the 1980s and early 1990s it was the first choice magazine for many teenagers, at its peak selling half a million copies every bi-weekly issue. A record breaking issue in 1989, featuring Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan, sold more than a million copies!

This post documents the first four versions of the magazine’s logo, spanning the publication’s most influential years — from italic Antique Olive Nord (1978) to equally heavy Futura-like caps (1980) [edit: apparently it’s Filmotype Free, see comments], to the iconic combination of Allegro and Volta (1982), and finally the angular condensed letterforms of Grecian (1985) which remained in use until September 2000.

All images courtesy of Brian McCloskey of Like Punk Never Happened, the definitive Smash Hits archive. He adds a new issue every fortnight, always on the thirtieth anniversary of the original publication date.

Antique Olive had to make way for shaded caps similar to Futura Extra Bold (but with vertical terminals on the ‘S’ [edit: apparently it’s Filmotype Free, see comments], paired with a handwritten “Smash”) from Vol. 2, No. 20 (October 2, 1980) on. Steve Bush was the magazine’s Design Editor at that time. Cover: Gary Numan by Dick Wallis/Rocktography.

The Allegro/Volta cover logo was introduced with Vol. 4, No. 21 from October 14, 1982. It had already appeared in the interior of the previous issue. Design Editor: Steve Bush. Design: David Bostock, Kimberley Leston. Cover: Culture Club by Eric Watson.

Vol 7, No. 16 from August 14, 1985 was the last one to feature this type combination.
Cover: Billy Idol by Retna.

The logo in Grecian was introduced in Vol. 7 No. 17 (August 28, 1985), and would last for 15 years. Editor: Steve Bush. Assistant Editor (Design): David Bostock. Design: Vici MacDonald. Cover: Simon le Bon and Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran, by Denis O’Regan/Idols.

Translated and annotated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Vintage Classics, 1999.
Cover design by Barbara de Wilde, using the image Turks, 1921, by Nicolaï Mikhailovich Grigoriev, Russian Museum, Leningrad.

Cover of Sing a song of Sex, by Hilary Hilton, 1963.
Illustration by Darcy (Anastassios Kyriakakos/Ernest Chiriacka)

[More info on Discogs]

Source: www.museumoflondon.org.uk Image via Museum of London. License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: www.museumoflondon.org.uk Image via Museum of London. License: All Rights Reserved.

Leaflet and poster advertising the Liverpool Festival of Music and the Arts organized as part of the Festival of Britain. For the large scale of the poster the designers likely used hand lettering rather than type, but it echoes the Allegro used in the leaflet.