The visual identity for Opera Open 2024, the flagship festival of the State Opera Plovdiv, was designed by the Plovdiv-based Studio Punkt. Celebrating the 70th anniversary of the opera house, the branding was tasked with a delicate mission: balancing a deep respect for classical tradition with a vibrant, international spirit that appeals to modern ‘opera tourists’.

Punkt’s approach centers on a custom logo design where the O in “Opera” and E in “Open” are highlighted with script characters (either from a font, or custom lettering) to symbolize the ‘openness’ of the festival. This same ‘open’ treatment is repeated with a(nother) script typeface in the poster series. The primary typeface, Muller Next by Fontfabric, serves as the backbone of the identity. Its geometric clarity and smooth, modern aesthetic allow for seamless transitions across a massive range of formats, from high-impact street posters and space branding at the Ancient Theatre to digital platforms and sophisticated festival catalogs.

The color palette is anchored by deep blues and energized by coral, mint, and yellow accents reflects the dramatic, open-air atmosphere of Plovdiv’s UNESCO-listed Ancient Theatre. By utilizing the flexibility of a variable font, Punkt created a cohesive visual language that honors the history of the site while firmly positioning the festival as a contemporary, world-class cultural event.

Source: www.penguin.co.uk License: All Rights Reserved.

A bunch of ampersands for the cover of Mac & His Problem from “one of the most prominent writers in the Spanish language” [Wikipedia], Enrique Vila–Matas. Fragmented coloured blocks loosely joined nearly cover the cover, and most of the blocks feature a hand-drawn ampersand. Although hand-drawn, most or all of them seem to follow a pre-made font. Using the numbered key (image below):

2 and 9 are Palatino Italic
3 is Baskerville or a follower
4 is a Caslon, perhaps Adobe Caslon Italic
5 is Palatino Regular
6 is Trajan
7 is Shelley Script
8 I didn’t manage to identify (and on some covers, block 1 also has the same design ampersand).

Author’s name (top) and book title (bottom) are set in Metro No. 2, with the mystery ampersand.

License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: vintagebooksdesign.tumblr.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: vintagebooksdesign.tumblr.com License: All Rights Reserved.

American Psycho is a 2000 cult thriller about Wall Street investment banker Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) with an alternate psychopathic ego.

The font used for opening titles and the business card of Bateman’s colleague Paul Allen is Copperplate Gothic. It’s a typeface with tiny flare serifs designed by American artist and type designer Frederic W. Goudy in 1903, with additional weights added by Clarence C. Marder of ATF.

From a discussion by Lola Landekic with American Psycho director Mary Harron and title designer Marlene McCarty, for Art of the Title:

In the opening you use a typeface called Copperplate. How did you decide on that?

Mary: Yes! Gideon Ponte, the production designer, found it. We were looking for something 1980s and minimalist. That was very important. I’m very big into typography. Love typography. It’s very important when you’re doing a period film — that all the typography has to be of the period. If you get the typography wrong, it’s like getting the hairstyles wrong.

Marlene: We were referencing some of the opulence of the 1980s, those American “boom” years, and Copperplate Gothic was a typeface that was used a lot in the late ’80s to represent money, luxury, power. Originally this typeface was used on signage for banks and law offices so it carried with it the aroma of power and wealth, significant attributes of Patrick Bateman’s character. Prior to doing American Psycho I had worked at M&Co with Tibor Kalman and we used Copperplate Gothic rather a lot then… but always with the idea that it brought that luxury and power to the project. Whether we were using that seriously or whether we were subverting that meaning ... so that’s where that idea came from. The kerning was merely a carryover from the stylistic tropes of the ’80s and the grid was loosely based on vertical thirds of the film screen.

Marlene: I can’t remember if I typeset it with an old fashioned typesetter and had it output to negative film for the animator or if I set the type on a computer. American Psycho existed right on that cusp between the analog and the digital.

Copperplate, the same typeface, appears again later in that scene with the business cards… It’s like a little callback.

Mary: Yes, indeed. It sets the tone and it’s a bit of a joke. When you see it later, you may not know it’s the same thing. It’s quite an elegant typeface. It’s like, Oh, this is the ultimate. This is so good we used it in our title sequence! [laughs]

Read the full interview on Art of the Title.

A visual research on what the life of long-haul truckers looks like, what they talk about and what they look at – a student project by Arzamas’ designer Masha Kasatkina. The book consists of four parts: “Trucks, From Outside and Within”, “Road, and on the Road”, “Brotherhood”, “Echo in the Culture”. Signal, based on a typeface from French road signs, reminds of the constant moving, while Archaism resembles wild typography of print ads and naïve design of the roadside restaurants. The serif typeface used for body text is Newton. Shelley Script Cyrillic is used for decoration, drop caps and selected elements.

Read the entire article on our website.

Matthew Carter’s Shelley Script on the cover of a paperback edition of The Master and Margarita, published by Grove Press in the early 1990s, in Mirra Ginsburg’s translation from 1967. From Wikipedia:

The Master and Margarita (Russian: Мастер и Маргарита) is a novel by Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov, written in the Soviet Union between 1928 and 1940 during Stalin’s regime. A censored version was published in Moscow magazine in 1966–1967, after the writer's death. The manuscript was not published as a book until 1967, in Paris. A samizdat version circulated that included parts cut out by official censors, and these were incorporated in a 1969 version published in Frankfurt. The novel has since been published in several languages and editions.

Shelley Script (1972) is based on the calligraphy of early eighteenth century English writing master George Shelley. It comes in three degrees of flourish; Adagio, Vivace, and Presto; this being Presto, with the curls on the swash cap M nicely echoing the cat’s tongue. While previous releases had three separate styles, Linotype’s OpenType version merges them into one font, with “Presto” made available via the Swash feature. Fun fact: The roman is another revival made by Carter in the 1970s: Cochin goes back to a design by Peignot & Fils from 1914. Carter reworked it at Linotype in 1977.

The cover was designed by Krystyna Skalski, with an illustration by Robert Goldstrom. The exact date is unclear to me. Cooper Hewitt dates it to 1991. The back cover suggests a printing date in 1992.

Sound of Confusion, the band’s 1986 debut album, released by Glass Records. Cover designed by Spacemen 3.

From Discogs:

Formed in 1982 in the town of Rugby by Pete Kember [...] and Jason Pierce [...], Spacemen 3 were to become one of the most important bands of the eighties, with their offshoots destined to spread out and become equally as vital in the nineties. Spacemen 3 and Jesus And Mary Chain were the godfathers of the shoegazer and drone-rock scene which blossomed in the U.K. at the close of the ’80s.

The band had a short but prolific life – they split up in 1989 but continued to release albums in the 1990s and 2000s, with previously unreleased tracks and live performances. The band designed the artwork of their first two album releases themselves, using Davison Psyche / Contest for the band name and title (first album) and band name (second album), and so a band logo was born. Some time later, a secondary band logo was designed, depicting an extraterrestrial creature’s eye mounted on a pyramid with the number 3 on it. Most albums of the band use either of the two logos, or a combination.

The different fonts used on album covers in combination with the band logo do not seem to be connected by any clear concept. Origin may be a thin red line, though: Shelley Script, Times New Roman and British Inserat were, like the band, created in the United Kingdom.

Recurring (recorded before the breakup, finished and released post-split) shows the numeral of the secondary band logo scattered and piled all over the cover. The band name and title are set in Zarana, a typeface of unclear origin, often credited to Compugraphic.

See also a previous post on Fonts In Use taking an in-depth look at the band’s Playing With Fire album, 1989.

The Perfect Prescription, released in 1987 by Glass Records with a cover designed by the band. The title is set in Matthew Carter’s Shelley Script.

Rerelease with original artwork (other rereleases have the title set in Eurostile).

Playing With Fire, published by Fire Records 1989. Design by the Robert Winterman Design Group. The condensed grotesk on a circle is British Inserat.

Performance – recorded in De Melkweg, Amsterdam in 1988, Glass Records / Fire Records. The grungy stretched typeface used for title and information is yet unidentified. The triangle logo replaces the number 3 from the original band wordmark.

Recurring, published in 1990 by Fire Records. The type used for the band name and album title is Zarana, slightly stretched (hello 1990s!) and contoured.

First hardback edition, Echo Press, 1999.

Maestoso slab-serif caps, loosely spaced and partly obscured by an oneiric painting, are contrasted with a lighthearted script, to set the atmosphere for Vita Nova. Published in 1999, the book is a collection of poems by Louise Glück, who was awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in literature.

The fonts in use are Eden and Shelley Script Vivace. The dust jacket was designed by Michael Ian Kaye, featuring art by Barbara Kassel. From the back cover:

Since, 1990, Louise Glück has been exploring a form that is, according to poet Robert Hass, her invention. Vita Nova – like its immediate predecessors, a book-length sequence – combines the ecstatic utterance of The Wild Iris with the worldly dramas elaborated in Meadowlands. Vita Nova is a book that exists in the long moment of spring, a book of deaths and beginnings, resignation and hope, brutal, luminous, and farseeing. Like late Yeats, Vita Nova dares large statement. By turns stern interlocutor and ardent novitiate, Glück compasses the essential human paradox, a terrifying act of perspective that brings into resolution the smallest human hope and the vast forces that shape and thwart it.

The type has been reset for the paperback edition (Echo Press, 2001). Unfortunately, the script used for the author’s name was slightly tracked, resulting in broken connections. This can happen when using InDesign’s “optical” letterspacing. While the “metric” option (should better be named “default” or “original”) will use the built-in spacing and kerning as defined by the type designer, “optical” replaces this with an algorithmic guess. This can be handy when using fonts with defective or missing kerning. It wrecks havoc on well-produced fonts, though, and must be avoided for connecting scripts.

The typeface used for the added blurb is Melior, which echoes the squarish forms of Eden.

Artwork for Mosey and Bonita’s “So Damn Funky” single.

This CD design by Sagmeister Inc. is not as famous as the hand lettered poster that promoted the album, but it’s striking in its own right. It came in a transparent blue jewel case containing a contrasting yellow booklet cover. I enjoy the irreverant back side of the booklet with its celestial symbology (including Astroids!) and playful copy, like…

Due to increased dynamic range, raise volume above average. PLAY IT LOUD.

The typography is typically 1990s.

A website for All Saints Estate, one of Australia’s oldest wineries.