Of Orc-Rags, Phials, & A Far Shore: Voices of Paradise in The Lord of the Rings by Bruce Palmer. T-K Graphics, Kansas City, Missouri, 1976. The title is in Book Jacket by Ursula Suess, used with various alternates, including two forms for n s A C L P R S. The price is added in Eurostile Bold.

These four pamphlets were issued by T-K Graphics between 1974 and 1977. The covers are printed in black on colored paper and feature typefaces that all seem to stem from the catalogs of VGC, ITC and Letraset.

Fanlore has a page about this publisher:

T-K Graphics was a distributor/retailer of pro books, but it is more well-known for publishing fan-created chapbooks and other amateur zines.

It was based in Baltimore, Maryland was founded in the early 1970s, perhaps earlier.

Via jell-o biafra says, a great (but sadly dormant) Tumblr for all things pulp, pop and underground.

The Drama of Ray Bradbury by Ben P. Indick. T-K Graphics, 1977. [More info on ISFDB] The title uses outlined caps from ITC Souvenir, with a timid swash initial. The author’s name is in Peignot, the price info in Book Jacket.

Middle Earth: A World in Conflict by Stephen O. Miller, with illustrations by James Shull. T-K Graphics, 1975. [More info on ISFDB] ITC Ronda is used in lowercase letters from the Bold, with alternates for a e r. The other fonts are Eurostile Light Extended, Grotesque No. 9 Italic, Windsor, and ITC Bolt.

An Arthurian Concordance by Dennis Lerond, with illustrations snagged from Aubrey Beardsley. T-K Graphics, Baltimore, 1974. [More info on ISFDB] Libra is paired with wide caps from Folio. The author’s name is added in Univers Condensed, the price info appears to be in Venus Extended.

Mirthrandir was a progressive rock band from the USA who self-released one album, in February of 1976. Very talented musicians playing very progressive and melodic rock. But it was 1976 and not a good time for starting prog bands. The artist name comes from misreading the name for character Mithrandir (Elvish for Gandalf) in Lord of the Rings.

In 1992, Syn-Phonic reissued the album on CD with a completely different cover.

In May 2024, the LP was reissued on vinyl with the original cover, in black, clear, and red/black splatter vinyl, in a total of 500 copies. This edition by PQR-Disques plusqueréel also includes a 12-page booklet with the band history and a bonus CD of previously unreleased recordings.

The front cover uses two fonts. The artist name is Neue Aurora VIII. It looks like it’s been made bolder or a little faded, since the corners look rounder than in the original typeface design. The album title is in Libra.

The front cover design was done by Patrick Milbourn. Bonnie Hiller is credited with the logo design but since the back cover has a different logo it is hard to say who did what. The back cover has an illustration that is credited separately. The labels on the LPs use the front cover design.

The band reunited (four original musicians plus two new guitar players) for a series of concerts around 2005 but the band retired again after a couple of years.

Read about Mirthrandir on MusicBrainz or visit the band's Facebook page.

[More info on Discogs]

The band name on the back cover looks like it’s in Industria Gravur a.k.a. Ronsard Crystal, but it appears to be Aurora-Grotesk V with a custom added inline. Track names and credits are set in News Gothic (or Trade Gothic).

Winter 1967

West Coast Review is a Simon Fraser University literary journal edited by Fred Candelaria. Shown here are the covers of the first three issues. The cover design is credited to the printer, Morriss Printing of Victoria, British Columbia. It features hand-rendered American Uncial Initials for the title and all-lowercase Futura for the author names. The information about volume, issue and date at the top combines roman small caps and italics from Monotype Baskerville. The price is printed in Libra Bold.

Fall 1966

Spring 1966

Chisel in caps of alternating colors and Libra with faux small caps (or enlarged initials) for a recording of Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suites 1 and 2, performed by the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg (Hamburg Staatsoper Orchestra) conducted by Wilhelm Brückner-Rüggeberg. The album was released by Pye Golden Guinea Records in the UK in 1959. This is an American pressing by Somerset from 1960.

[More info on Discogs]

Madeira branded acoustic and electric guitars comprised a 1970s–1980 line of Japanese and Korean assembled imports, distributed by the USA company Guild Musical Instruments of New Jersey.

The logo is based on Libra, S.H. de Roos’s uncial designed for the Amsterdam Type Foundry in 1938. In some applications like the one shown above, the letterforms were joined up.

Myths of the Norsemen: Retold from the Old Norse Poems and Tales by Roger Lancelyn Green (1918–1987) was first published in 1960. This is the cover of Puffin’s paperback edition from 1976, with illustrations by Brian Wildsmith. The typeface chosen for the title is Libra: this modern uncial designed by S.H. de Roos in the 1930s strikes a good balance between the forms of Insular script as it was used in the British Isles during the Viking Age (see e.g. the Book of Durrow and the Book of Kells), and what’s easily legible to young readers today.

Libra (1938) is an uncial typeface by Dutch designer S.H. de Roos. As an interpretation of uncial scripts as used from the 4th to 8th centuries, it has a single case only: to our modern eyes, some letters look like they’re capitals (B, R), whereas others have forms that follow the minuscule construction (a, h, m, n).

When “unicase” typefaces became fashionable in the 1960s, Don Schlitten picked Libra for the cover of an album with Appalachian folk music. The “songs, reels and child ballads” on Cumberland Moonshiner were sung by Tennessee musician Hamper McBee (here misspelled as MacBee), accompanied by Guy Carawan. The album was released in June 1964 by Prestige Folklore, a spin-off of Prestige Records.

[More info on Discogs]

Poster for an exhibition of Where We At held in January 1972 at the Weusi-Nyumba Ya Sanaa Gallery in Harlem, featuring works by Carol Blank, Kay Brown, Carol Byard, Jerrolyn Crooks, Iris Crump, Pat Davis, Doris Kané, Mai Mai Leabua, Dindga McCannon, Onnie Millar, Charlotte Richardson, Faith Ringgold, Ann Tanksley, and Jean Taylor.

Cookin’ & Smokin’ was a continuation of Where We At: Black Women Artists 1971, a group show arranged by McCannon, Brown and others, which led to the formation of WWA as a collective of Black women artists. From “Abundant Evidence: Black Women Artists of the 1960s and 1970s” by Valerie Smith:

Organized in 1971, “Where We At” Black Women Artists (WWA) provided an opportunity for
black women, marginalized by both the predominantly male Black Arts Movement (the cultural and aesthetic counterpart of the Black Power Movement) and the largely white feminist (and feminist art) organizations, to share concerns and resources. Although they made art, many of WWA’s members did not consider themselves professional artists. As Kay Brown, a painter, printmaker, and collagist, explained in a 1984 panel discussion held at the Hatch-Billops Collection in New York City: “They were conditioned to think that they could not really achieve the status of a professional artist.” By providing these women with a space in which they could engage in meaningful substantive conversation and exchange work and ideas, WWA helped them gain confidence and inspired them to continue.

The poster shows portraits of the thirteen featured artists. Via AAVAD:

Top row, left to right: Dindga McCannon and her daughter, Ann Tanksley, Carole Byard, Jean Taylor (as Joan), Charlotte Richardson; middle row: Faith Ringgold, Gylbert Coker, Kay Brown; bottom row: Doris Kane, Iris Crump, Carole Blank, Jerri Crooks. [Illus. in The Power of Feminist Art, ed. Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1994: 107.]

The title typeface is Libra. It’s paired with Folio fett and what appears to be a proportionally spaced typewriter adaptation of Bookman.

Psychic Observer & Chimes, Vol. XXXVIII No. 2, Jul–Sep 1978. The title uses Harry Obese.

Magazine focusing on spiritualism, the occult, and the unexplained that began in 1974 with the merger of Psychic Observer (1968–1974) and Chimes (1942–1974). The new magazine simply combined the logos of the pre-existing publications – the former in a crude rendition of Legende, the latter in caps from Sintex. Psychic Observer & Chimes was discontinued after the July–October 1981 issue.

Psychic Observer & Chimes, Vol. XXXVII No. 5, Sep–Oct 1977. The cover typeface is Palatino.

Chimes, Oct 1971, featuring Univers, Lydian Bold Condensed Italic, and Koster.

Psychic Observer, Vol. XXXIII No. 3, 1972, with blurry Microgramma and anemic caps from Optima.

Psychic Observer, Vol. XXXII No. 4, 1971. Legende here appears sharper than in later issues. “Electronic Spirit Communication” is set in Libra. The smaller type uses a Futura-like substance.

Written by Solveig Paulson Russell, with drawings by Ralph J. McDonald. Published by Abingdon Press in 1970. From the flap:

Peanuts, popcorn, ice cream, candy, soda pop—foods as everyday as telephone poles, as festive as a birthday party or a circus.

Do you know that jars shaped like peanuts have been found in ancient Inca tombs? Or that popcorn was part of the Pilgrims’ first Thanksgiving? That Nero may have been the first to serve an iced dessert? Products of more than 25 countries are used in making candy? Or that cola drinks were first thought to have curative powers?
True. All true … and more besides.

Title page.

Detail: The face used for “Popcorn” is shown in The Solotype Catalog of 4.147 Display Typefaces (1992) as Fatima.

Detail: The face used for “Candy” is shown in the Solotype catalog as Stars & Stripes.

Libra in use on the book jacket, cover, and title page of A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin, with drawings by Ruth Robbins. This first edition of the award-winning coming-of-age story published by Parnassus Press in 1968.

This piece by Dutch designer Nan Platvoet for Tété magazine visualizes a Dutch proverb that has its English equivalent in “The pitcher goes often to the well, but is broken at last,” and “Der Krug geht so lange zum Brunnen, bis er bricht” in German.

Tété was a Dutch “technical magazine for the graphic industry” that first appeared shortly after the May 1945 liberation. It was conceived as an independent trade magazine focusing on technical detail (with consistent attention for type and typography), probably to avoid the occasionally painful ideological confrontations in the graphic design world. This was mainly a discord between left-wing graphic designers (several of whom had been active in the anti-Nazi resistance during the 1940-45 occupation) and commercial artists who had continued working quietly, hoping to stay a-political.

This is from Tété # 9, March-April 1946; Platvoet also designed its cover. Nan Platvoet, who never became famous, was a talented illustrator-designer who was clealry no member of the leftist elite. Yet he contributed richly to mid-century trade magazines, advertising and corporate publications and gradually developed his own brand of neo-modernism. In this personal piece there is a hint of forced post-liberation optimism (or perhaps wry humour?) in the colorful picture and type; the latter was set in the successful Libra from the Amsterdam Typefoundry — pre-1940 type director Sjoerd de Roos’s take on the uncial.

• From the Fust & Friends archive.

For more info on the conflict between commercial artists and leftist graphic designers, see my article “A Dutch Controversy” written for TypoGraphic 61, ISTD 2003.

3110 Santa Monica Blvd. Santa Monica, CA. Dining – Dancing – Entertainment
The Aristocrat Universal Match Co.

Rush.com:

A Farewell To Kings was recorded at Rockfield Studios in Wales, and mixed at Advision Studios in London. The album took three weeks to record and two weeks to mix. It was the band’s Rush’s first US gold-selling album, receiving the certification within two months of its release, and was eventually certified platinum. The band was happy with how it turned out. Geddy recalled in 1978:

“It’s the only one of our albums apart from ‘2112‘ that I can really live with. I’ve yet to look at it and start finding fault with it, pick it apart, you know…it still sounds so positive.”

From Rush: Chemistry: The Definitive Biography (2005) by Jon Collins:

Rush artist Hugh Syme had previously played keyboards in The Ian Thomas band, whose guitarist, Josh Anderson, was called on to be the “puppet king” for the A Farewell To Kings album cover by RUSH.

“He was really a rake of a man, really, really thin and he was perfect for the part. He had a beautifully receding forehead already and all I had to do was go and retouch his mouth, shoulder and knee joints to appear mannequin-like.” — Hugh Syme.

Packaging for “pure stearic christmas candles”, with drawn letterforms modeled after Libra.

“Ye Golden M” — in mounted metal letters from Libra, S.H. de Roos’ uncial designed for Lettergieterij Amsterdam in 1938. Spotted in Regensburg, Bavaria, by Andreas Maxbauer.

“Drawing of [the children’s book character] Eloise taken from a photo of one of Lena’s tattoos. Type inspired by the Chateau Marmont stationery.” — CHIPS