The 1932 “System” shows a gumball machine with Goudy Cursive (top) and Viant (bottom)

A four-page flyer advertising the Nintendo Super System arcade machine. Modula Sans is used to suggest that the system is modern and cutting-edge, contrasting with the more old-fashioned fonts associated with earlier “systems”.

Futura Extra Bold is used alongside Modula Sans for headings. Smaller text uses Matrix. Both Matrix and Modula Sans had been recently designed by Zuzana Licko.

The Nintendo Super System logo itself uses Aurora Condensed.

The “Better System” from 1957 shows a jukebox. The bold informal sans is unidentified [edit: it’s the upright style of Helvetica Showcard, see comments]. The word swell in the background appears to be in Futura licht.

Modula Sans is used for the Super System from 1992.

The last page combines Modula Sans with Matrix and Futura Extra Bold. The small print is in regular Futura.

This is the second studio album by Japanese singer-songwriter Taeko Ohnuki. This would also be her last album under the record label PANAM. All songs were written by her, and arranged by renowned composer and keyboardist Ryuichi Sakamoto.

Despite having very low sales at the time of its release, it recently garnered attention and popularity due to Youtube's recommendation system, which eventually got reissued many times during the recent years.

At the front cover, the album title is manually italicized using Futura Inline and the artist's name is set in a bold italic weight of Futura.

At the back cover, the tracklist (and also the Latin/English titles) are set in a fine weight of Nāru (ナール). The musicians and staff seem to be set in a condensed variant of Trade Gothic.

Art direction by Kazuhiro Sato, with photography by Tohru Ohnuki.

[More info on Discogs]

Album cover

Mr. Wildflower is the debut album from Canadian musician and visual artist Mac MacLaren, announced on December 1, 2023, and released independently on March 1, 2024.

The album design is by Mac MacLaren, with photography by Tyler Gardiner. The album art prominently features text set in Raphaël Bastide and Jérémy Landes’ Fungal in various growth-affected styles. Fungal, based on Bistream DejaVu, was a challenge given to Landes from Bastide to "make a typeface rot and ferment" (Studio Triple). This rotting growth affect was used in the album's artwork to symbolize memory loss by demonstrating a progressively worsening text legibility as the album's written story progresses. This is featured most noticeably on the back of the Wildflower Gazette vinyl insert, where the story becomes nearly illegible mirroring the titular character's decent into a dementia-fueled haze.

Several fonts from the last century and older make an appearance in the Wildflower Gazette vinyl insert in an homage to dense information-packed periodicals of these older periods. These various typefaces are mostly digitizations by Dick Pape based on the originals, including Via Face Don (circa 1977) by Hans Donner and Sylvia Trenker, Frankfurter (1970) by Bob Newman and its copy Rock Opera (circa 1974), Tuscan Italian (1853) by Jordan Davies, Futura Licht (1931) by Paul Renner and Pluto issued by Face Photosetting in 1969. Picnic by Mariel·le Nils and Adelphe by Eugénie Bidaut are also featured.

I created a hand-cut linocut design with a W initial based on Arnold Böcklin for the second vinyl insert and album promotional poster. I transferred the letter to the block directly from my scan of the typeface which inadvertently mirrored the letter, and luckily since its only a W it’s not a noticeable mistake!

Back cover

Spine

Record labels

Insert featuring Picnic and drop caps set in Via Face Don

Insert featuring Frankfurter and Rock Opera

Insert featuring MAiD “advert” set in Via Face Don, with additional text in Tuscan Italian, Futura Licht and Adelphe

Insert featuring Pluto, and Fungal with increasing growth levels

Linocut print featuring hand-cut lettering based on Arnold Böcklin

The cover of the 1967 version of Self Hypnotism: The Technique and Its Use in Daily Living by Leslie M. Lecron, which is focused on encouraging self-hypnotism to correct numerous perceived daily problems.

Futura licht is used for the top portion of the title, whilst the author’s name uses a typeface in the same vein; specifically the seldom-seen Tempo Heavy Inline. The remainder of the text uses numerous different styles of Futura (or one of its copies.)

Futura licht is perhaps one of the rarest members of Paul Renner's Futura family; it wouldn’t receive a digitization until 2020’s Futura Now, when it would be expanded with numerous weights and a fill style. It makes an appearance in this book, with at least one instance being bichromatic.

Title page

Futura Licht is also used for a drop cap, paired with text set in Linotype Baskerville.

Photo by Ron Stoner.

Patti McGee (b. 1945), the first female professional skateboarder, on the cover of Skateboarder Magazine, 1965.

The magazine was first published in Winter 1964 by John Severson, as a spin-off of Surfer. After the second issue, the title was changed from The Quarterly Skateboarder to Skateboarder Magazine. The bichromatic treatment with Cooper Hilite for the logo was retained. On this cover, it’s complemented by right-aligned lines in alternating colors, set in caps from Onyx, Twentieth Century Ultrabold, Neue Aurora VIII, Futura licht, and Univers 67.

The publication ceased after this fourth issue featuring McGee. It was resumed a decade later, in 1975, now with a new logo set in tightly spaced ITC Grouch (not pictured here). TransWorld SKATEboarding maintains an archive of Skateboarder Magazine, with scans courtesy of Six Stair Productions. Via Daniel Benneworth-Gray.

Spread from the interior: “Profile” again is in Haas Inserat-Grotesk / Neue Aurora VIII, “The Lady is a Champ” in Akzidenz-Grotesk, and body copy in Trade Gothic.