Thomas Brussig’s 2001 German-language novel Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee is described as “a moving and miraculously comic story of life in East Berlin before the fall of the Wall.” For the first English translation, published by Picador as The Short End of the Sonnenallee, Cecilia Zhang designed a cover she describes as being influenced by the work of Paul Bacon. The strikingly sparse cover pairs strong use of Ballast with Zhang’s hand-drawn illustration and handwritten treatment for “A Novel.” Art direction by Alex Merto.

For her jacket design for Jack in the Box, Cecilia Zhang drew inspiration from the paraphernalia of vintage theatre playbills. Adding to the design’s narrative, the author’s signature gives the impression of a beloved autographed fan copy of the flyer.

Jack in the Box is a memoir by Jack O’Brien (b. 1939), winner of Tony and Drama Desk Awards and the former artistic director of San Diego’s historic Old Globe theatre. The hardback edition was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in November 2022, using Ballast for the title and author name, with all-caps Futura for the subtitle. The paperback version by Picador, which will follow later this year, uses the same basic design.

About the book:

In Jack in the Box, O’Brien’s follow-up to his memoir Jack Be Nimble, the director collects stories from the many productions he has worked on, the great talents he encountered and collaborated with (including Tom Stoppard, Mike Nichols, Jerry Lewis, Marsha Mason, and many others), and the choices he made, on the stage and off, that have come to define his career. With humor, warmth, and contagious excitement, O’Brien takes the reader by the shoulder, pulls them in, and tells them how to become a director—or, at the very least, relates an unfailingly honest story of how he did.

For the paperback edition, the author’s name was made slightly larger, and the signature moved down a little.

VMP (a.k.a. Vinyl Me, Please) released The Story of Vanguard, a box set presenting “a story told through six albums of peerless folk, with an eye towards historical accuracy and faithful mastering.” The vinyl albums in the set were lacquered from the original master tapes of Vanguard Records, a label known for both the music library of its 1950s–60s heyday, as well as for its memorable cover designs created under the art direction of Jules Halfant.

Designer Clay Conder paid homage to that history with dramatic use of Ballast and sparing subheads in Franklin Gothic Condensed. VMP’s house typeface Studio carries the main running text (printed in blue!) for the booklet of extensive liner notes.

Clay Conder shared these comments by email:

Since the aim of this project was to bring the wonderful Vanguard catalog of 50s and 60s folk music to a new, modern audience, I wanted a font that felt fitting for that era, but with a quirkiness that brought it into the current day. For that, Ballast was the perfect fit. It has all the elements of a classic slab serif like Egyptienne Bold Condensed, but with fun fresh touches that I really enjoyed playing with.

Designer Ben Denzer encodes Ballast in a type-only cover for Democracy’s Data: The Hidden Stories in the U.S. Census and How to Read Them by Dan Bouk. Bold compressed type combined with strategic color make for a memorable typographic image and an effective reading of a long title.

Paperback edition

Inside of unfolded invitation, 10″×14″

For The Paris Review’s 2019 Spring Revel benefit invitation design, Topos Graphics conveyed a broad range of book design with 18 carefully-selected bookish typefaces. Topos provided this explanation by email:

We designed a book shelf environment for text elements to be placed, composing texts as if they were individual titles. Different volumes of content got different character treatments. This functioned to compartmentalize the invitation’s hierarchy of info, but it also allowed us to approach each individual element anew. Like a personal library, the result takes on a character of its own. Tinged with old- and new-era sensibilities, we felt the selections—and the suite's ​ color palette—connected to The Paris Review’s 1960s advent and a contemporary moment—both in literature and typography. Book collections, like font collections, showcase a rich diversity of history, form and taste.

The invitation unfolded to a 10″×14″ posterette, with the front and back sides designed as a kind of A-Side, B-Side of a wooden bookshelf. The shelf cubbies gave us spaces—a semblance of a grid—to place information within. And that grid functioned through the event’s other collateral, like its printed program.

The annual event’s title “REVEL” is spelled out of book spines and a clever crop of Schmalfette Grotesk’s R. Strategic moves in hierarchy, with color, scale, and type orientation, create an engagingly graphic reading of a large amount of text. The books are energetically stacked, with the bookshelf bolstering as a grid to group and separate information.

Additional typefaces reflect different eras and aesthetics of book design: elegantly readable Garamond Premier, Paperback, and Study; mid-century classics like ITC Franklin Gothic and Lydian; genre-novel signifiers Ballast, Bookmania, and Cortado; stoic and structural ITC Lubalin Graph, Swiss 721, and Sentinel; contemporary and inventive Minérale and Canela.

Larger book spines use display typefaces to prioritize the most pertinent information, like the event location and speakers. Smaller type used uniformly suggests the repeated design systems of book series—Study for the board of directors and Schmalfette Grotesk for list of hosts.

The opposite side of the unfolded invitation provides a peek at the book blocks from behind the shelves and a quiet background for a mailing label. All information is repeated from the graphic side, set more traditionally in Garamond Premier. The attention to hierarchy persists, and ruled lines parallel the organizational function of the bookshelf.

Front of folded invitation. The Paris Review’s logo is segmented on book edges.

Outside of the invitation, unfolded

Close crop of the vector artwork

Close crop of the vector artwork

Close crop of the vector artwork

Close crop of the vector artwork. Garamond Premier is used in various of its optical sizes.

Close up of Minérale, Schmalfette Grotesk, Paperback Italic, and a little bit of Chrysaora

Close up of the writer hosts section using Schmalfette Grotesk

Family Album is the fourth studio album by Lia Ices, released January 29, 2021 via the Natural label. It was written on Moon Mountain in Sonoma, California on the precipice of motherhood. On Family Album, Ices embraced collectivity and collaboration (the record’s title is apt in a multitude of ways). Part of that is allowing a higher level of collaboration than ever before, part is becoming a mother, part is Sonoma’s Edenic Moon Mountain, part is the Wild West freedom inherent in California, part is an awareness of herself, and, most significantly, of growing ever more into that.

The front cover features a prominent use of Ballast (Ben Kiel, XYZ Type) for the album title masthead. Located in the negative space above the word family, hosts a union of smaller secondary typefaces such as Davida, Neue Helvetica and Special Elite. The lowercase y in the word “Family” was altered slightly to feature a more curious ball and fennel design.

Front cover photo by Renee Friedrich
Back cover photo by Christopher Woodcock
Art direction by Aaron Brown
Designed by John Zabawa

[More info on Discogs]

Zine cover

For his senior capstone project as an architecture student at Washington University in St. Louis, Noah Treviño explored the role of play in design process and thinking. The conceptual project took physical form in a workbook zine and a research booklet (full version here).

Asked about his type choices, Noah wrote:

When deciding on a type pairing for my architecture capstone, Play as Process, I had a few goals in mind. The entire project calls for designers to go back and incorporate a childlike sense of play into their design processes to better tap into creative potential as well as make the design field more accessible to those who might not identify as designers.

I knew what I was putting forward would be text heavy, which is why I settled on IBM Plex Sans for the body type. It is easy to read and looks good at smaller sizes. It doesn't command too much attention and it plays well with others which was important because I wanted something bold for the display type.

After much trial and error, I settled on Ballast for my display type. I found it to be bold and strong, yet playful and inviting. It wasn't too rigid and stuffy, which was extremely important. Play as Process also spent a great deal of time invoking mid-century designers, artists, and architects. Ballast felt like the perfect bridge between then and now. It felt vintage without being cliché.

My favorite examples of Ballast in use in the project were the large quote pages. Seeing the type in the largest instance and engaging with the texture of the images was fun. Working out the placement and content was a challenge I enjoyed when laying out the project development book. In these moments the subtle details of the typeface were very forward, noticeable, and appreciated, all while not taking away from the components on the page. It truly did as the definition of a ballast suggests: stabilize and balance.

Zine spread

Zine spread

Zine spread

Research booklet spread

Research booklet spread

Research booklet spread

Design prompt inspired by Oblique Strategies, generated by a Python script

Design prompt inspired by Oblique Strategies, generated by a Python script

Identity and web design for Carla who wanted to write. The site is a diary, personal but at the same time shared online. With dated but unordered entries. Without images (except one, hidden) where the texts are the protagonists of the diary.

The texts on the website are composed in Times New Roman. Ballast by XYZ Type serves for headlines. The wordmark uses Tiempos.

Expanded from a 2018 article for The New York Times Magazine, Nathaniel Rich’s book Losing Earth: A Recent History tells the story of how “a handful of scientists, politicians, and strategists [...] risked their careers in a desperate, escalating campaign to convince the world to act before it was too late.”

Rodrigo Corral’s cover conveys the urgency of the book’s content by starkly pairing Ballast with a simple image in a two-color palette.

OCD Agency’s type-forward identity system for Supermajority hinges on a customized version of in-progress Ballast (a typeface originally designed for New York Magazine). Ballast’s authoritative voice was softened with a few added quirks, including a distinctive S and a schoolbook-style y.

Supporting text is set in Tablet Gothic Condensed, FS Blake, and Lora.

From Supermajority’s website:

Supermajority is a new home for women's activism, training and mobilizing a multiracial, intergenerational community that will fight for gender equity together.

Supermajority Education Fund’s bus, on its cross-country tour

Supermajority leaders Ai-Jen Poo, Cecile Richards, and Katherine Grainger with a handmade jacket

Elizabeth Warren with Cecile Richards at an October 2019 event

Various Egyptienne Bold Condenseds have long been central to New York magazine’s design aesthetic, dating back to the issues that co-founder Milton Glaser art directed and continuing in contemporary print and web editions with readily-available digital interpretations.

For the magazine’s 50th anniversary issue (October 22, 2017), design director Tom Alberty and deputy art director Chris Cristiano expanded their typographic palette by commissioning a new, extra-narrow typeface in the style.

For the custom “NY Egyptienne Compressed”, XYZ Type’s Ben Kiel looked back to Schelter & Giesecke’s Halbfette Egyptienne (circa 1880) to return to the roots of a typeface which is generally seen through the lens of the PLINC version. An adapted version of custom typeface was publicly released under the new name Ballast, and Kiel shares more about the magazine’s commission in a journal post.