Titan(ic) aka Hercules for poetry!

This was the Amsterdam Typefoundry’s Hercules, put to surprising use on the dust cover of a collection of poems by famous (socialist) Dutch poetess Henriette Roland Holst-van der Schalk. Originally issued in Germany as Titan(ic), later marketed under different names and invariably as foundry type, by a variety of foundries.
The publisher of this 1951 hard-cover book is the type-conscious W. L. & J. Brusse company in Rotterdam. One of the book designers most active for the company was Wim Brusse in Amsterdam – son and nephew to the two founding brothers – and he might be the author of this anonymous design.

• From the Fust & Friends archive.

CD cover.

A really early use of FF Meta on the cover of Saint Etienne’s 1993 album So Tough. Definitely read the comments by designer Anthony Sweeney below.

Saint Etienne are a fairly “conceptual” group influenced by sixties pop and eighties house music — this album's a good introduction to their work — and the retro-sixties sleeve with the track names listed is quite characteristic of their aesthetic.

I hadn't looked at the sleeve closely for years and was quite surprised to see what now seems like a classic 90s font — I'd imagined it being something like Monotype Grotesque Condensed or Alternate Gothic.

The album title is probably in Bunny Ears, a lowercase-only version of Titanic/Hercules, with long alternates for ‘b f h k l’

[More info on Discogs]

LP front cover, Heavenly, 1993.

Promo poster.

Titanic AKA Hercule(s) is used for “chante…”.

Song titles set in Chambord, with an accidental serif R in “Grands”. Names of authors/composers in Caslon?

Vendôme playing a modest part in lower left and right corner.

Record label with song titles / authors set in Gill Sans and a compressed gothic typeface.

Source: grandmasperogies.com

There isn’t any type on the front and spine of the jacket for John Steinbeck’s novella, and yet it qualifies for the inclusion on Fonts In Use: the freely-drawn caps are clearly based on Cartoon. This caps-only typeface, a design by Howard Trafton, was first cast by Bauer in 1936 – just one year before the book was released. Apart from the fact that repeating letters are not identical, the only real departure from the model is the M and how the center strokes meet – it’s almost like an upside-down W, but not quite.

For the text on the back and the inner flaps, Memphis was paired with the bold display face known as Titanic or Hercules. Its jolly A and M make me think of Robert Crumb’s Keep on Truckin’ cartoon.

Printed in the United States of America by J.J. Little and Ives Company, New York. Robert Josephy is credited as the designer. It is unclear whether he is responsible for the interior only, or also for the jacket.

Facsimile dust jacket

Glyph set of Cartoon Bold

Featuring the exotically named Zelda Plum as the front cover artist. Photographed by Peter Smith.

[More info on Discogs]

Ads for Sparkasse Erlangen, the local savings bank, on the front and back cover of a public transport time table. Printed by Gutenberg-Druckerei Erlangen in 1952, back when telephone numbers had four digits.

The fat upright cursive is Titanic a.k.a. Titantypo. Read more about it and the various digital versions on the typeface page. The condensed sans is the schmalfett style of Kristall-Grotesk.