Byte magazine, issue #4, December 1975

Bill Godbout was something of a pioneer in the early microcomputer movement of the 1970s, and his firm Bill Godbout Electronics was a commercial vehicle selling discount and surplus electronics and microcomputer components. Bill Godbout Electronics was a regular advertiser in the early issues of the seminal BYTE magazine. Issue #4 is the first Christmas issue and features a 2-pager from Bill Godbout Electronics that mixes a large number of fonts in a style typical of both this era and this advertiser.

“Bill Godbout Electronics” is in Wexford. I think the “CAVE grafix” is lettering, but the first word may be based on Koloss (see further below). “Wish you a joyous holiday season” and so in is in Davida. “If you are into toyful tinkering” and so on is in outlined Cooper Black.

“Son-of-a Cheap Clock” is in Tonight, and above it “We have a successor to our very popular ‘Cheap Clock Kit’!” is in Script (for the IBM Selectric; see also the body fonts, glossed below). The price, $14.50, is in Umbra. Both Script and Umbra are used on the following page.

Windsor is used for “they also make great gifts” (on the curve) and the following text. “Electronic Projects for Musicians” is Reklameschrift Herold. Below the decorative band, “EROM board special offer” is in Helvetica, outlined and with a South shadow.

“4K x 8 pre-programmed for 8080” is in an outline style of a somewhat Microgramma-like font that I couldn’t identify that is also used on the second page.

On the second page, “Bigger & Better” is in Skin & Bones (using two alternates for G, but not for E). “Pace 16 bit chip set” is in Koloss. “1 Pace 16 bit CPU” and other text on and under the curve is the previously mentioned and unidentified outline Microgramma-lookalike.

“Pace Data Packet” is Advertisers Gothic (using the A without a top flag). “4K x 8 RAM kit” is in Umbra. “EROM board kit” is in Rock Opera. The “8K x 8” and so on again is in Wexford. “There’s more ... We have” is in Monogram.

The body text (and some secondary and subtitle text) is typewritten in a variety of fonts, and I did a much better job of identifying those, all available on the IBM Selectric:

On the first page the text for the clock, starting “BIGGER DIGITS” is in Artisan. “By Craig Anderton” (the author of “Electronic Projects for Musicians”) is in Orator (probably, in any case Orator is used on the next page).

The text for the Craig Anderton blurb is Adjutant, I think. Delegate and Adjutant are very similar with only slight differences in weight and thick/thin contrast, but they have different pitches: Adjutant is 12 characters per inch, and is tighter than Delegate at 10. The text block at the bottom of the first page, starting “By special arrangement”, is in Bookface Academic.

On the second page, below “Pace 16 bit”, the text starting “This chip set gets you into PACE” is in Manifold. The word “PACE” itself is in another font (the Selectric had a feature where you could switch type-balls and still retain the cursor position), possibly Pica. Manifold is again used for the bottom paragraph starting “READOUTS, LEDS, TRANSISTORS”. Below “Pace Data Packet”, “Since we started advertising” is Orator. Below “4K x 8 RAM”, “Note the lower price” looks like Prestige Elite.

Below “EROM BOARD”, the text starting “Now you can stuff up to 8K” initially had me stumped, but I think I have tracked it down. The small caps in place of little letters, made me think of Orator, which it isn’t; the o is distinctly squaroid and reminded me of the output of the IBM lineprinters, such as the 1403. It turns out that the IBM Selectric has a typeball called AN3/360 which the 1972 brochure specifically says matches the AN3 style available on IBM’s lineprinters.

At the bottom of the second page, to the right of the wordmark, the payment and terms text starting “YOU MAY PLACE MASTERCHARGE® OR BANKAMERICARD® ORDERS” is in Script.

Source: archive.org Internet Archive. License: All Rights Reserved.

Fonts from the Flea Market #1258

Two styles of Papirtis Pink Mouse, “D” (with heavy outline) and “E” (contoured and shaded), both used in all caps, for the cover of a compilation of disco and funk music. The featured artists are listed in two colums of center-aligned text, with the song names set in Helvetica caps, framing six square snapshots of the dancing party crowd. Cover design by Ted Pettus at Kameny Associates, Inc.

The Spring Records logo is set in Skin & Bones featuring its alternate g.

[More info on Discogs]

Debut album by jazz fusion group The Eleventh House, led by the guitarist Larry Coryell. The cover design is by Jules Halfant (1909–2001) who served as the art director of Vanguard Records from 1953 to 1988. The typeface he chose is Busorama. Drawn by Tom Carnase and produced at Photo-Lettering, the Art Deco-ish geometric sans was released in 1970 as one of the first typefaces by ITC. It comes with a large number of alternates, some of which were used here, like the narrower E, or the H with protruding crossbar. The latter is a bit of a strange choice, as it causes spacing issues in “THE” and “HOUSE”. My hunch is that Halfant used Letraset’s adaptation of Busorama Bold, which came exclusively with this form of H.

The artwork is by Jacques Wyrs. Halfant repeatedly worked with the multicolored paintings by the Paris-based artist for records by Coryell, see also Spaces (1974) or Planet End (1975).

[More info on Discogs]

On the back cover, the band name is shown in reversed Skin & Bones, with the names of the members in Century Expanded. The track list uses Melior.

Single cover for “Departamento” by Argentine rock band Bandalos Chinos featuring Adán Jodorowsky, son of French/Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky. Design by Lucila Taba.

Skin & Bones with alternate ‘e’.

The designers must have been dissatisfied with Skin & Bones’ ‘x’, and drew their own.

The Photo Typositor was a major display phototypesetting machine invented by Murray Friedel in 1959 and marketed by the Visual Graphics Corporation (VGC). [Peter Bain]

The Photo Typositor 3000, which was advertised as new in U&lc, vol. 2, no. 2 from June 1975, and its follow-up, the 3100, have a nameplate in tightly spaced caps from Skin & Bones, a bi-line typeface designed by Douglas F. Jones and released by VGC in circa 1972.

The logo for the 3200 model switches to another variety of Bauhaus-y letterforms [edit: namely Blippo, see the comment by Mark Simonson]. The name is now rendered as “phototypositor”, in all lowercase letters, without space.

“Delicious branding” (Tamye Riggs) — the Photo Typositor 3100 as spotted at the Museum of Printing History in North Andover, Massachussetts

The Museum of the Printing Arts in Leipzig is home to a Photo Typositor 3200.

The Photo Typositor 3200 in a magazine ad from 1985. The ad typography is in Korinna.

“Typography … at your fingertips!” An earlier version of the Photo Typositor, featuring a logo in custom sans serif caps with an extended ‘T’ bar.

This placard is near the outdoor stairsteps that lead up to the Moody Theater in Austin, Texas.

Ever since the 1974 pilot episode featuring Willie Nelson, Austin PBS affiliate KLRU’s Austin City Limits has used Douglas F. Jones’s Skin & Bones in its logotype. Currently in the midst of its 40th anniversary season, ACL is the longest-running music series in American television history.

Screencaps of the 1974 pilot episode.

Graphic for Austin City Limits's 40th anniversary season.

Singer Ed Sheeran performing at Austin City Limits while wearing an ACL shirt.

ACL Store/Waterloo Records at the Austin Bergstrom Airport in Austin, Texas.

The Austin company CS Presents has put on The Austin City Limits Music Festival every year since 2002. In 2013, the festival expanded its schedule into two consecutive weekends of musical performances.

Apparently ACL’s old set at Communications Building B on the University of Texas at Austin campus had a sizeable hexagonal rug. (Since 2011, Austin City Limits has filmed their concerts at the Moody Theater in downtown Austin, Texas.)

Art Direction: Acy Lehman
Design: Kazuhisa Fujita