Front cover of the “Big Box” CD release for the Mac

A fediverse post showing the CD cover for The Incredible Machine 3 prompted me to write this up. The Incredible Machine, often abbreviated TIM, was a 1990s series of puzzle-solving computer games where players create a Rube Goldberg device. In fact, it seems to be responsible for creating the Rube Goldberg genre. The original TIM was published in 1993, and went on to spawn quite a few sequels, spin-offs, ports, and imitators.

TIM 3 is essentially a port of the DOS game TIM 2 to the GUI operating systems, principally Windows and Mac. The box art for TIM 3 uses Lithos and Modula Sans for the title, and Modular Sans for much of the secondary text. Two very iconic 1990s designs by two very iconic 1990s designers: Carol Twombly and Zuzana Licko respectively.

Artwork for the earlier versions relies on the obvious LTypi: ITC Machine. And since this is clearly a 1990s post, I had to show the interior of the manual for TIM 2 which features another landmark of the 1990s: Remedy.

Splashscreen for the original DOS version. Note the wordmark that’s based on modified ITC Machine.

The splashscreen for The Incredible Machine 2 is a much more straightforward LTypI.

Front cover of the manual for The Incredible Machine 2, using ITC Machine.

A right-hand page from the interior of the manual for The Incredible Machine 2, showing typical typography. Remedy is used throughout the manual for titles and subtitles.

Magic Canoe is a non-profit charitable organization whose mission is to build solutions to the polycrisis that are locally-driven and draw on deep wells of creativity, natural abundance, and local knowledge.

The identity was designed by Vancouver-based Zak, using IvyOra Display Thin for headlines and IvyOra Text for body text, combined with Futura PT for navigation. The logo is based on Times New Roman.

Victor Verhelst and Corbin Mahieu collaborated on a bold new identity for Kunsthal Mechelen. The designers were inspired by the ironwork in archival photos of the garage and developed a font for Kunsthal Mechelen, based on the existing KTF Labyrinth by Kyiv Type Foundry. Times New Roman Bold Condensed is used on the website and posters.

Kunsthal Mechelen is a generous house for contemporary art that extends across several locations in Mechelen, both indoors and in public spaces.

The Contact Books were a short post-WW2 series of factual books that looked a variety of topics this edition, from late 1947, was on ‘holiday activities and mood’. The volumes were issued at about four-monthly intervals and, as well as adverts, contain many illustrations and photographs often by well-known artists and designers. This dustwrapper or book jacket is by Edward Bawden and shows a variety of pleasurable activities around town.

JT Picolo (Edward Dżułaj) and Kompas (Hanna Boslau) are the fonts used for Platform Pudding. From the magazine’s website:

Platform Pudding is a reflective platform on design – from graphic design to fashion and architecture, from Senseo coffee machines to Marcel Breuer’s S-32 dining chair. Design is about the tools that play a role in our daily lives. Pudding aims to foster a cross-pollination between theory and practice within design. Pudding explores the impact design has on society through diverse perspectives and various writing formats.

The magazine title appears to mix parts of Times New Roman and Helvetica.

My portfolio is finally online! A two-year journey has come to an end.

This is more than just a website displaying my work—it's a complete rethinking of my philosophy in both web development and branding. Dozens of concepts, variations, and design approaches, created from scratch, led to the result you see today.

I aimed to reimagine classic website templates while maintaining the familiar logic of content exploration and adding my own ideas. This is how elements like the sliding contact panel, the detailed project information panel, parallax and depth-enhancing forms, and many others emerged.

The entire visual language was created to be clean and simple—not distracting, but complementary. Small animations, details, tooltips, icons, micro-effects—everything is carefully considered and an integral part of the system.

A huge amount of time and effort was invested in this project, and I am truly pleased with the end result. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Original 2006 cover

From the Lemon Demon Wiki:

Dinosaurchestra is Lemon Demon’s fifth album, released on July 20, 2006. It was remastered by Angel Hair Audio LLC and then re-released by Needlejuice Records and Acrobat Unstable Records on January 1, 2022. It is the first to include a text commentary, a secret track, and a booklet. It is also the longest Lemon Demon album to date, with over two hours of music (including bonus tracks).

The front cover displays a diorama on what appears to be the inside of a door, comprised of household objects (a toothbrush, a deck of cards, a rose, a key, etc), a CD-R labeled “MUSIC?” and a piece of paper with a blue dinosaur character with heart pupil eyes (semi-officially named “Goodsie”) printed on it, while a piece of paper displays the band name in a light condensed and warped version of Novel Gothic, with the album title displayed in a similarly warped Times New Roman.

It is unknown what digitization of Novel Gothic was used for the “Lemon Demon” text. Perhaps Neil could have used one of the many poor digitizations back then of it? (Castcraft’s version comes to mind, it does have a bold weight which is very similar.)

[More info on Discogs]

Remastered 2022 album cover

Back insert on original 2006 release. The tracklisting is set in ITC Souvenir Light, while the “Dinosaurchestra” text on the bottom of the tracklist uses Harlow Solid. The text on the right spine also uses this font (albeit with the uppercase L and D replaced by a unknown font.)

Restored 2022 back insert. The copyright info in the lower left corner is set in Gill Sans.

Back panel of 2006 booklet and on 2022 re-release. All of the text is in custom handwriting.

The Berkeley Tribe is possibly the most famous “New Left” newspaper. Centered in Berkeley, California, it (like other publications) focused on revolutionary subject matter (Black/Women's Liberation, Gay rights, Antiwar Movements, etc.). Their headquarters were at multiple times bombed or shot, with the FBI surveilling their operation.

The masthead, like with many famous magazines, such as TIME, is a custom lettering.

Crediting designers for each issue can be tricky, as intimidation from attacks and police prompted staff to remove their names from the masthead. However, East Bay Media is noted to have served the tribe's publishing and at least some graphic design from 1971, the time of this issue here (it is possible other Berkeley area shops filled a similar role during the paper's run, too).

Early covers and hand lettering are credited to designer Gary Grimshaw, who possibly did not work on this particular specimen.

Shown here are the cover and a selection of eleven of the twenty-four pages, featuring most of the display fonts used in the editorial design at least once. Text is set in Univers and Century Schoolbook.

Headlines in Dom Casual (“The Unknown Defendant”) and Clarendon (“Justice We Don’t Expect From You”)

Publicity Gothic (“No Future Rev No Family”) and Clarendon

“Weather Sister Ripped Off At Flicks” is in Roberta.

Headlines in Antikva Margaret (“U.S. Bombs”) and Windsor Elongated (“Thoughts On Being Human”)

Grotesque No. 9 for “SIERRA” and “feedback”

Franklin Gothic for the “Pusherman” headline, De Vinne for “Human Culture Time-Line”

Cooper Black and Haas Inserat Grotesk for “War-Season’s Greetings from JAPAN” . The ad below features two weights of Blippo (equivalent to Burko and Harry) and City.

Profil for “OKINAWA”. The ad for Midnight Films uses Mistral.

More Inserat-Grotesk for “The Sacred Tree is Dead”. Times New Roman is used for the poem at the bottom right.

The “KILL ’EM” headline is set in Windsor. Smoke and Futura feature for the Free Store ad and Helvetica for the one by Sound City.

The “Masturbation” headline is in Jay Gothic. Fonts used in the ads include Flash (“Native Son”) and Commercial Script (“MANDRAKE’S).

Fanfic. Vers de nouveaux usages passionnés et graphiques (“Fanfic, towards new passionate and graphic uses”) is a book made by Laurie Liviero as thesis project at Ésac Cambrai in 2025. It was designed using Baste (from Lift Type) and Times New Roman.

Liviero describes her book as follows (translated from the French):

This thesis might never have existed, as it is the successor to many abandoned and discarded topics. It was born from a sentence thrown out into the wind, almost as a joke: Imagine, a thesis on fanfic. Why take the risk? Too popular, too intimate, too loaded with connotations. As if I were going to have to expose myself, no longer able to hide. But behind these doubts, ideas persisted: reinvented stories, reappropriated graphics, shared passions. These issues were ultimately the key, since they now constitute the object you are reading. A testimony that I hope is passionate, critical, and educational, and that I now leave to its own devices. Right here, in the palm of your hands.

Visual identity of the quarterly booklet, the quarterly program posters and the posters for all events for Maison CFC, a bookstore in Brussels, Belgium.

An album from the legendary Wackie’s record label based in the Bronx, active in the late 1970s and 1980s. Helmed by Lloyd Barnes, it became an important place for roots reggae and dub productions with many artists coming from Jamaica to get the special Bullwackie treatment.

The album’s typography is constructed using dry-transfer lettering, mainly Letraset. It’s interesting to see an X-Acto knife reproduced on the cover. It’s shown next to a microphone, a reel-to-reel tape, and what looks like a ruler. Perhaps, a nod to the way the cover is made? The bulk of Wackie’s album covers were very much in the pared down, lo-fi style, appropriate to the sound of the label itself.

The Presenting line is set in Tintoretto. the rest of the type on the front is set in Raphael, and Eurostile.

Note that the images shown are from the reissue from 2005, which scanned the original covers and reproduced them. Early 2000s saw a big interest in the Wackie’s label and many reissues were published in Germany by Basic Channel at that time.

The album was designed Leslie A. Moore, who ran LAM Graphics International design studio, specializing in album covers. You can see more of Leslie’s work at discogs.com

Back of the album is dominated by Bodoni Bold, Times New Roman, and Eurostile. The credits of musicians on the back are curious in that they use the caps from Bodoni, and lowercase from Times New Roman. This certainly is easy to do with dry-transfer lettering.

Original back cover with the distribution credits to Wackie’s and the year at bottom right

Cover for the edition by Mandarin Publishers, Hong Kong / UK

The Mysterious World of Dinosaurs is a non-fiction book written by John Heritage and illustrated by Francis Phillipps and others. It was originally published in 1980 by Octopus Books, London, for WH Smith. The ravages of time have left their mark on Helvetica.

Title page from a 1983 reissue by Treasure Press, ft. Trooper Roman. The small print is in Times New Roman.

Table of contents ft. ITC Caslon No. 223 and Univers

Chapter beginning with the heading in ITC Caslon No. 223 Light. The text typeface is Century Schoolbook.

Launched during the Tokyo Art Book Fair 2025 at the MOT Contemporary Museum of Arts, this book is presented as follows by its designer Black Skew:

This second edition is a creative exploration of the everyday graphics of Tokyo and its surroundings, with a particular focus on the dense network of visual information in the capital’s transport system.

The issue examines the graphic systems that shape how we move through the city: from the micro-typography of subway maps and arrows on asphalt, to pedestrian-level signage, street-side billboards, bus and metro stops, airport signage, tactile paving, and multilingual instructional graphics. From metro signage to roadside warnings, it frames Tokyo not only as a city of buildings, but as a city of signals.

The project moves between visual research and reinvention.

The typefaces used are Lay Grotesk by Massimiliano Vitti (Due Studio), Ufficio Mono, DGM Composta and Ufficio Display by Giulia Boggio (Dogma Studio), as well as Kozuka Gothic for Japanese text and Times New Roman.

It was printed by Lasergraph in Milan, Italy, on Munken Print 90gsm. The book spans 48 pages and is bound with saddle stitch.

The novelization of George A. Romero’s zombie horror classic Dawn of the Dead – the sequel to Night of the Living Dead – was co-written by Susanna Sparrow and first published by St. Martin’s Press in 1978.

Interestingly, jacket designer Paul Bruner used Davison Art Nouveau with the same alternates as on the covers of Frank Herbert’s Dune, as extensively detailed in The Mystery of the Dune Font here on Fonts In Use.

[More info on ISFDB]

Arhoolie Records released this blues compilation in 1972, with songs by Roosevelt Holts and his friends, namely Boogie Bill Webb, Eli Owens, Blind Pete Burrell, and Esau Weary. Of the eleven tracks, all but one were recorded August 1970, in Bogalusa, Clifton, and New Orleans.

The cover design is by Wayne Pope, with photography and liner notes by David Evans. The top-heavy typeface he picked for the title is Secession, which originated around 1900 at the Scholz foundry in Vienna. This provenience shines through in the capital H – it uses the enlarged lowercase form with top bar as found in blackletter typefaces.

[More info on Discogs]

This cover is for a c.1971 reissue of The Planets as recorded by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Adrian Boult on September 10–11, 1953, at Walthamstow Assembly Hall. Instead of showing the planets themselves, designer Norman Glick opted for light trails that hint at their orbits. The typeface to go with these multiline structures is Rémy Peignot’s Cristal, released by Deberny & Peignot in the year of the recording.

[More info on Discogs]

TT Commons Pro is featured on the website of Uniqlo, a Japanese casual clothing retailer. Japanese text is rendered in Hiragino Kaku Gothic.

The logo of LifeWear, Uniqlo’s web magazine, appears to use Times New Roman with the a borrowed from Big Caslon. The text serif is Libre Baskerville.

Record cover for AcidSitter’s 2025 album Escape from Egoland designed by Jacek Rudzki featuring an early use of Dioda for the title, alongside with Druk Wide, Neue Helvetica and Times New Roman.

AcidSitter is a Polish/Japanese psych rock band. Debuted in 2023 with the album Make Acid Great Again on Interstellar Smoke Records, they are exploring a wide range of psychedelia with rock ’n’ roll passion and punk energy.

[More info on Discogs]

The unofficial IKEA Report is a self-initiated editorial series by Kai Kwong a.k.a. dollgirls, celebrating the good stuff from IKEA.

The title is set in City Boy TM and Recoleta Condensed, with Domino Mono and League Script. Text typefaces are Instrument Sans and what looks like a condensed version of Times New Roman.

A striking print ad for the Dick Smith CAT, published in the May 1984 release of the magazine Electronics Australia. The Dick Smith CAT was an Apple II clone created by retailer Dick Smith, a chain of Australian electronics retail stores.

The headline “Only $699!” uses Helvetica Inserat, catching the viewer’s eye with bright red, emboldened text that leaps out from the page. Helvetica Inserat was designed by Arthur Ritzel and was first released in 1966 or 1969 by Stempel.

The slogan “Our CAT eats Apples!” uses Times New Roman. Times New Roman was designed by Stanley Morison and Victor Lardent, and was first released in 1931 by Monotype.

The mail-in information header and form use Helvetica. Helvetica was designed by Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann, and was first released in 1957 by Haas under the name Neue Haas Grotesk.