Exhibition catalog for Four Young Artists: Maurice Agis, John Bowstead, David Hockney, Peter Phillips, presented at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts in July 1962. With an introduction by the ICA’s co-founder Roland Penrose and biographies for each artist. According to The Print Arkive, this was the first ‘solo’ show for Hockney.

In memory of David Hockney, who passed away this week at the age of 88.

Front cover of the UK release by Parlophone (PMC 7009)

From Wikipedia:

Revolver is the seventh studio album by the English rock band the Beatles. It was released on 5 August 1966, accompanied by the double A-side single “Eleanor Rigby” / “Yellow Submarine”. The album was the Beatles’ final recording project before their retirement as live performers and marked the group’s most overt use of studio technology to date, building on the advances of their late 1965 release Rubber Soul. It has since become regarded as one of the greatest and most innovative albums in the history of popular music, with recognition centred on its range of musical styles, diverse sounds and lyrical content. […]

Voormann’s artwork was part line drawing and part collage, using photographs mostly taken over 1964–65 by Robert Freeman. In his line drawings of the four Beatles (McCartney, Lennon, Harrison and Starr, clockwise from top-left), Voormann drew inspiration from the work of the nineteenth-century illustrator Aubrey Beardsley, who was the subject of a long-running exhibition at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum in 1966 and highly influential on fashion and design themes of the time. Voormann placed the various photos within the tangle of hair that connects the four faces. Turner writes that the drawings show each Beatle “in another state of consciousness”, such that the older images appear to be tumbling out from them.

The title on the front cover is set in caps from Grotesque No. 9.

[More info on Discogs]

Back cover of the UK release by Parlophone (PMC 7009), with a photo taken by Robert Whitaker during the filming at Abbey Road on 19 May. Here the title is rendered in caps from Placard, with the track names and credits set in several styles from Univers. The info at the bottom is set in the Venus series, including Condensed and Extended styles. The printer’s credit is in Gill Sans.

The spine lettering uses an extrabold weight of Gill Sans.

Front cover of the US release by Capitol Records (T 2576). Apart from the company’s logo, it is identical to the British version.

Back cover of the US release by Capitol Records (T 2576). For the North American market, Revolver was reduced to eleven songs, with the omitted three appearing on the June 1966 LP Yesterday and Today. The title isn’t set in Placard, but in the similar Anzeigen-Grotesk. The small bits use various styles from the Trade Gothic series.

The Oscar Peterson Trio and the Gerry Mulligan Quartet – At Newport [More info on Discogs]

The Newport Jazz Festival was established by Elaine Lorillard in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1954. According to Wikipedia, “the 1957 festival was well documented by Verve Records, which released 12 albums of recorded performances.” Several of the recordings made in July 1957 were reissued six years later, in 1963, on two albums that follow the same basic cover design.

Designer John Murello had the titles set in four lines of all-caps Placard Bold Condensed, and then distorted them by photographic means. The result looks like a flag fluttering in the coastal wind. This association is underpinned on the back cover, where the lettering is repeated five times, complete with added flagpoles.

For the Oscar Peterson Trio and the Gerry Mulligan Quartet, Murello colored the lines in dark purple, green, blue, and red orange, against a white background. For the Count Basie Band with Joe Williams and the Dizzy Gillespie Band, he opted for a different palette with pink, two shades of orange, and yellow, against a black background.

The track list and liner notes (by Bob Rolontz) on the back are set in Bodoni.

The Count Basie Band with Joe Williams and the Dizzy Gillespie Band – At Newport [More info on Discogs]

From The inspiration room:

Diesel, the international jeans brand, is launching “Be Stupid”, a campaign that encourages consumers to take risks and move beyond the smart and sensible track for life. The campaign, developed at global advertising agency Anomaly, includes online, press and outdoor advertisements featuring “stupid” acts, a digital recruitment campaign for the Diesel music video/2010 catalogue, and viral activity outlining the company’s Stupid philosophy.

West Cooper Nouveau Swash Bold with shadow and interlinear ligatures, on the cover of an album by the Olympia Brass Band. Small differences between repeating letters suggest that this is lettering derived from PLINC’s alphabet style.

In Europe was recorded in Berlin on 4 August 1968 and released in 1969 on 77 Records, London. The jazz brass band from New Orleans had been revived under the historical name by saxophonist Harold Dejan in 1958. Dejan (1909–2002) led the band until shortly before his death.

The band had a notable part in the 1973 James Bond movie Live and Let Die where they lead a funeral march for a victim assassinated during the march.

Sleeve design by Stuart McMillan, with photography by Doug Dobell.

[More info on Discogs]

The compressed caps used for the title on the back cover are from Placard.

Countdown was a British sci-fi comic published weekly under various titles from 1971 to 1973. In addition to comic strips based on various TV programs, such as Doctor Who and UFO, Countdown featured its own self-titled strip including spacecraft designs from the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The comic’s type styles are clearly derived from 2001 (e.g., Microgramma) and other space-based entertainment of the day, and the Countdown logo appears to be lettering based on the 1965 typeface of the same name! Countdown is also used frequently in the interior of the comic, including the title of the recurring feature “Do Flying Saucers Exist?”.

It was easy to see that someone with a creative eye was in charge of Countdown. It looked very modern and stylish. … it also had its own unique gimmicks, such as the page numbering which ran backwards! Living up to its name, the pages began at 24 and counted down to the back page being 1. Don't worry; the stories themselves were not printed in reverse order. — Lew Stringer

See more of issues 1 and 2 below, and many more issues at Saved From The Paper Drive.

“The free gift in issue one was a fantastic ‘Giant Spacefact Wallchart’ with the first set of stickers to adorn the edges of the chart. (Other stickers would be given free in following issues, thus hooking the reader into continuing with the comic.)” — Lew Stringer

The editor, Dennis Hooper, greets readers by touting Countdown’s photogravure printing process, common at the time for fashion magazines, but certainly not comic books.

The Dr. Who title is set in Amelia. Speech balloon text uses Gill Sans in light roman and italic caps.

Countdown No. 2.

Countdown continued to feature Countdown in subsequent issues.

What is more futuristic than Countdown? Don’t miss the description of the autonomous cars of the future guided by computers and subsurface cables.

Portuguese single cover for "Then Came You" by Dionne Warwicke (sic) and Spinners on Atlantic Records, featuring lots of Lucky, including its rarely seen lowercase. The small type (“1º Lugar — U.S.A.”) is Placard.

Page #4, with comparison table and overlaid usage.

This leaflet, titled “The Impact of Impact”, showcases the typeface’s great power for being overlaid on an image, and also compares it to other typefaces. It was prominently featured in Vox’s 2015 article/video about the typeface’s ubiquity in memes, written by Phil Edwards.

Geoffrey Lee, Impact’s designer, sent scans of the brochure to a user in a 2004 Typophile thread, in which he comments about the design under the username “gyl”. Later in the same thread, the pdf files were shared publicly by Geraint Franklin (“geraintf”).

The leaflet includes a comparison with the letters ah from nine competing bold display sans serifs. From the top left, these are: Placard Bold Condensed, Franklin Gothic Extra Bold (sic) Condensed, Grotesque No. 9, Venus Bold Condensed, and Folio Bold Condensed. The bottom row shows Permanent Headline, Placard Medium Condensed, Univers Bold Condensed (67), and Folio Extra Bold.

All typeface names from competitors are anonymized as “x”. The only names that are given in full are Impact and Grotesque No. 9, both by Stephenson Blake. Lee had mentioned that the comparison included Helvetica Inserat, but he must have misremembered. The text font is Adonis, another 1960s release by Stephenson Blake.

The pdfs were numbered 1 through 4, but in the given order, the flashy picture pages would come last, with the specimens coming first. This would be a weird advertising choice. Hence, I have assumed that the pdf were numbered backwards, and put the PDF ordering of the pages in the image captions.

Page #3, with overlaid usage and announcement of small size cuts.

Page #2, with large size specimen and ad copy.

Page #1, with specimens.

The New York Doughnut Map, published by All-You-Can-Eat Press, “includes a brief history of doughnuts, and features 35 favorite New York doughnut shops”.

I was unable to identify a few on the many typefaces that were used on the map. If you recognize any of please feel free to share in the comments.