Goodbye, Jimmy Cliff.

The Jamaican musician who helped popularize reggae music internationally died on November 24, 2025, at the age of 81. In 1971, when “Goodbye Yesterday” came out, Cliff already had a couple of hits under his belt, including “Wonderful World, Beautiful People” (1969) and “You Can Get It If You Really Want” (1970). It was still before his rise to global stardom: a year later, he would play the lead role in The Harder They Come, the film that “brought reggae to the world”, and contribute four songs to its iconic soundtrack, including the title track.

The sleeve for the Belgian release features Magnetic. Mecanorma’s contribution to the MICR genre is a dry transfer adaptation of Photo-Lettering’s Magnetic Ink, which in turn is based on James H. Moore’s Moore Computer. Magnetic/Magnetic Ink is distinguished by an unmodulated O and an I with thickened top and bottom, among other details.

[More info on Discogs]

Load’n’Run was a magazine compilation of computer programs on tape cassette that could be “RUN” on the ZX Spectrum microcomputer. 10 issues were published in 1984. Each issue consists of a short (4 or 8 pages) print magazine and a cover tape. The tape had several republished programs and some original material.

This “SuperVideo” demonstration is the last program on the cover tape for issue #2.

SuperVideo is a programming system that allows a sequence of text based “cards” to be shown, possibly with border decorations and motion scrolling. It is the sort of thing that might be used to display automatically cycling adverts in a shop, or show instructions in fancy text for a program to follow.

The demo is written in the SuperVideo system it is demonstrating. SuperVideo has several different fonts, and concludes with a charming adaptation of Magnetic Ink to the 8-bit world. Here converted onto an 8×8 pixel grid (the cap height is 7 pixels, with 8 pixels from baseline-to-baseline).

The print portion of the magazine used Magnetic Ink for the title “LOAD’N’RUN” altered to remove the decorative dot in N.

The ZX Spectrum microcomputer loaded programs from compact cassette tape, and the user had to stop the tape manually when instructed. The font here is a striped/inline Art Deco style, vaguely reminiscent of Broadway Engraved and similar, but with round-topped A and M. When running the program, the text scrolls up the screen.

Text (8 pixels) and Title (16 pixels) sizes for a somewhat generic serif font. Note the non-conventional thick/thin placement on the U.

Front cover of Load’n’Run issue 2, feature a lightly modified Magnetic Ink treated with a scanline effect. Perhaps this is where the designers of the serif font in SuperVideo (see other images) got the thick/thin constrast in their U from.

Original album cover, here from the UK release on RCA Victor, 1972

In 1972, shortly after the commercial breakthrough of David Bowie's fifth album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, RCA Records decided to reissue Bowie’s 1969 self-titled debut album. Retitled Space Oddity, the album was repackaged, with the cover and sleeve featuring new photographs of Bowie by Mick Rock. In 2020, Space Oddity was re-released in a vinyl picture disc format with an enclosed poster.

The album titling “David Bowie Space Oddity” is typeset in Magnetic Ink. The sticker reading “David Bowie poster enclosed” combines a star-spangled Chwast Blimp with Cooper Black.

Note: Some of the images shown below are from the promotion of the 2020 vinyl picture disc re-release, which are of higher quality but otherwise a reproduction of the original 1972 album cover design with only minor changes. Additional copy typeset in Data 70 not included in the original 1972 release.

[More info on Discogs]

Sticker

Cover of the 2020 reissue

Advert for the 2020 reissue, with copy added in Data 70

The geometric caps on the poster are either from Burko or the virtually identical Blippo. See the poster from the original 1972 release on Discogs.

Wonderful use of Magnetic Ink in an abbreviated gradient on the front cover. It took a while to track down this font as there are several very similar variations. My first thought was Amelia, but the small squares that appear beneath the N and M led me to Computer. Magnetic Ink is Photo-Lettering’s adaptation of this typeface originally designed by James H. Moore for VGC. One of the details that distinguishes the Photo-Lettering version is the flipped V. Below this are some variations of a 3D Ginger Snap. These uses are repeated on the back, but the inner sleeve contains a nice yellow shaded detail to the Discovery font.

The author line is set in Futura and the credits on the back cover are in Monticello. This compilation of essays by science fiction writers was edited by Tom Purdom and published by Doubleday in 1969. Jacket design by Rose Sommerschield.

[More info on ISFDB]

“Blossom Lady” was a No. 2 hit in the Netherlands, but failed to chart in the UK or the US. The title is set in Mecanorma’s Magnetic, see Magnetic Ink.

Discovered at Letterboxd.