Carson turned Joe Connor’s Texas into a living Hell.

Phillip Boydell’s Festival Titling (Monotype, 1952) with customized solid letterforms, for the book cover of a Western novel by Kingsley West, published by Berkley Medallion in 1965.

In 1993, London design studio Stylorouge perfectly encapsulated the Anglocentric, nostalgic tone of the burgeoning “Britpop” movement with their design for Blur’s second album Modern Life Is Rubbish. The type used here is Festival Titling, created by Phillip Boydell (1896–1984) for Monotype as the official display face for the 1951 Festival of Britain — an astute choice to suggest that a large part of Britpop’s not-so-subtle rhetoric included a sense of longing for the glory days of the British Empire (the cover for Blur’s single “For Tomorrow”, released a few weeks before the album and also designed by Stylorouge, showed two WWII Spitfire fighter aircrafts in full “Battle of Britain” mode).

The painting here, by artist Paul Gribble, depicts the iconic 1937 Mallard steam engine, whose original brass nameplate was fittingly lettered in all-caps Gill Sans. A proud symbol of British industrial power and ingenuity, today the Mallard is on display at the National Railway Museum in York.

Massey University Press:

Mervyn Taylor — wood engraver, painter, illustrator, sculptor and designer — was one of the most celebrated New Zealand artists of the 1930s to 1960s. He was highly connected to modernism and nationalism as it was expressed in the New Zealand art and literature of the period. Between 1956 and 1964 he created twelve murals for major new government and civic buildings erected in that era of great economic prosperity, during which New Zealand first began to loosen its apron-string ties to England. Tragically, some have been destroyed and others presumed lost — until now.

Festival Titling, designed in 1950 as the official display face for the Festival of Britain, is a fitting choice for the topic, both in its flavor and its pedigree. Its sharp, streamlined letters, each divided into highlight and shadow, is very reminiscent of Taylor’s murals. The other interior typefaces, Metric and Tiempos, are also appropriate as a local product, designed by New Zealand native Kris Sowersby. I can’t explain why Futura also makes an appearance when Metric would do, but, like Festival, it is period appropriate. This is a very handsome book.

Homepage

The Penfold Press

was opened in 2005 by Daniel Bugg as a print studio where artists are able collaborate with a printmaker in order to explore the creative possibilities of a number printmaking techniques. Working with an exciting group of artists who share an interest in popular art the Penfold Press has gone on to publish editions of prints by Mark Hearld, Emily Sutton, Ed Kluz, Jonny Hannah, Michael Kirkman and Angela Harding.

Penfold Press uses Festival Titling as the primary font in its visual identity. The faceted all-caps typeface that was originally designed by Phillip Boydell for the Festival of Britain in 1951 appears in the website header and elsewhere.

Banner for an exhibition at Janette Ray Books in York, 2015.

Twitter profile picture

An interesting and appropriate use of Festival Titling in this advertising poster for an exhibition of British Neo-Romantic Art at Beverley Art Gallery.

This paste-up mural with Festival Titling is part of the Wordplay project, a Monotype contribution to the Clerkenwell Design Week. Seven verbs are set in Monotype fonts, rendered in different materials and displayed all around Clerkenwell.

Spotted at the Complete Traveller Antiquarian Bookstore; Murray Hill, Manhattan. Documented for the LTypI photo pool.

Fonts In Use just turned three. That seems young, but it’s something like a teenager in internet years, right? Regardless, the more significant milestone came in mid-2012 when we launched the Collection, opening the archive to public submissions. Since then, we’ve experienced a growth spurt: the site now documents and discusses* over 3,200 designs using at least one of over 1,700 typeface families from hundreds of foundries. (*I use the present tense because Fonts In Use is a living archive — one in which entries of any age are easily accessible, cross-referenced, and with comment threads that are always open for new insights and discussion.)

Ok, numbers are nice, but what thrills us most about the new platform is what it can do. Over the last few months we improved our typeface pages, adding high-resolution samples, space for biographical information, and links to sources and related typefaces. We gave account holders the ability to create Sets and “Like” Uses. We expanded the Collection pages so they show more Uses and take advantage of wide screens. And we deployed an bunch of other enhancements that are best covered in another post.

We also welcomed new writers to the Blog so we can publish more frequent typographic histories, observations, and critiques.

Today, we celebrate our birthday with a few party favors. Introducing the first of an annual awards show. What follows is the “best of Fonts In Use in 2013”, as dictated by our editorial staff. This list of font uses and users is a glimpse into contemporary type-driven graphic design. We hope it surfaces content from the collection that you may have missed, and sparks you to contribute your own work — or work you admire — to the growing archive.

Uses of the Year

To us, great typography means thoughtful type choices used in skillful or unusual ways. The work below reached the pinnacle of that standard in 2013. The winners include designs from a range of formats, from exhibition and poster design to websites and book covers. They represent designers and studios from around the globe. And they span the gamut of typeface styles, both old and new, from over a dozen different foundries.

Big Plans Exhibition Design
Designed by Jessica Svendsen and Julia Novitch
Using Bureau Grot and Letter Gothic

1941: The Year That Keeps Returning Book Cover
Designed by Rumors
Using Puncho and DTL Fleischmann

Image, Building, Object Film Series Posters
Designed by James Goggin
Using Plak and an unreleased typeface by Laurenz Brunner

The Bling Ring Trailer and Posters
Designed by P+A and Silenzio Communication
Using Dom

Designing News
Designed by Francesco Franchi
Using Domaine, Atlas Grotesk, and Atlas Typewriter

Uses of the Year

Honorable Mentions

Stitching in my own way: The embroideries of Iris Todd

Stalkr Brand and Website

Kunst am Spreeknie Schöneweide Art Festival

2013 Pitchfork Music Festival Announcement

2013 Pitchfork Music Festival

2013 Pitchfork Music Festival App

Gargalo Nº 1, 2, 3, 4

Bambudda

Achtung: Berlin Symposium

Messages by Dillon Francis Music Video and Album Art

Belvedere Square Market Sign

Fritz Müller Sparkling Wines

Users of the Year

These graphic designers and studios produced several pieces that our staff recognized as exceptional typography. For this award we looked at all the Uses in the Collection credited to a designer, not just the work produced in 2013. (When we say “Users” we mean “font users”. The best users of the site are honored in the next section: “Contributors of the Year”.)

Pentagram

NYC Beaches identity

InsideOut SF poster diptych

Rockaway Beach Installations

The Printing House identity

This storied New York-based studio is well represented in our collection not just because they are famous or produce so much newsworthy, visible work, but because they obviously love type. Pentagram makes good use of a wide range of typefaces and they document that work well, writing about their type selection and giving credit to the font makers.

Nina Stössinger

“Zu bürgerlicher Eintracht und Vertraulichkeit”

10 Jahre Sprachenzentrum

kobebeef

Ästhetik des Opfers

Nina Stössinger is a Swiss designer of books and identities who uses a variety of typefaces (many of them very new) from various sources and lucidly articulates her choices on her site and Fonts In Use. We recognize her here not for her 2013 work, but for her rich contributions over the last three years. She can be excused for using less type recently because she’s been quite busy learning more about how to make it: Stössinger is currently a Type and Media graduate student at KABK in The Hague. She writes about that experience too.

Solo

Gargalo Liqueur

Deseo & Psiquiatría

Gargalo Wine

El valor del tiempo perdido

Solo is a Barcelona studio founded in 2011 by Óscar Germade. Their work for a range of luxury brands and editorial publications is characterized by restraint, setting stages in which the type itself is the focal point.

Studio Laucke Siebein

Angewandt Exhibition Materials

KinderKulturMonat (ChildrenCultureMonth)

Poster for Typography Lectures at HBK Saar

Flexa Creations Color Chips

Like Stössinger, this nod to Studio Laucke Siebein is more of a multi-year achievement award. Dirk Laucke (Amsterdam) and Johanna Siebein (Berlin) give new life to unusual and forgotten typefaces in their decidedly modern work.

Users of the Year

Honorable Mentions

Thomas Alberty, New York Magazine

Arem Duplessis, The New York Times Magazine

The New York Times Digital

TGG Hafen Senn Stieger

Robb Rice

Richard Turley, Bloomberg Businessweek

Contributors of the Year

Since we opened the site to public submissions in mid-2012, these Fonts In Use visitors contributed the most interesting and discussion-provoking Uses to the Collection. Not only did they upload good images of great work, but bonus points were awarded for adding insight, commentary, or critique.

Chris Purcell

After over 30 years as a designer and lettering artist at Hallmark Cards, Chris Purcell retired in 2012. Their loss is our gain: Chris has been a voracious contributor to Fonts In Use since then, adding over 40 Uses to the Collection. His submissions are broad ranging, covering many different industries, formats, and periods. The examples are sometimes from his own collection or documented with his own photography. And many of them are more than a simple image upload: they include his commentary, which often generates further discussion.

Mille Bornes Card Game (1960 Edition)

13-inch Lucite® ruler (1970s)

Smithsonian Magazine Table of Contents (1989 & 2013)

Maurice Meilleur

Along with some of his own fine work, Maurice Meilleur has contributed several pieces by other designers. Maurice is an MFA student in graphic design at the University of Illinois, and his literate, academic approach is very welcome among our ranks. We’re grateful for Maurice’s extra effort in spotting interesting work, writing a useful description, and producing good imagery, either from his own photos or images generated from PDFs.

University of Illinois

Isotype: Design & Contexts

De:Bug Magazin

Patch Hofweber

Patch Hofweber is a American ex-pat living in Malmö, Sweden. His contributions number over 20 to date, and focus on web and identity design, two areas of his own multidisciplinary expertise. He sometimes supplements his submissions with a bit of typographic critique, an attribute that served him well as one of our rare guest writers on the Fonts In Use Blog.

Julius: The Cards

Örnbergsauktionen 2013

A List Apart 5.0

Contributors of the Year

Honorable Mentions

Mine Creek

Robin Rendle

Michael Bojkowski

Contributors of the Year

Font Foundries & Providers

Letters from Sweden

TypeTogether

Rosetta

FontFont

bb-bureau (Benoît Bodhuin)

Editions 205

Sudtipos

Font Bureau

Webtype

Contributions of the Year

This is a placeholder for a future award, meant for those non-staff contributions that are exceptional in their visual documentation, critical analysis, and/or historical research. To get that ball rolling for 2014, here are a few Uses that were popular or controversial from last year:

Volksbühne Berlin Poster Campaign

The Other Times Modern

Cheers Logo and Opening Titles

Myspace 2013 Rebrand

Hessian

The Third Man Movie Poster

The Great Gatsby Film Promotion

2013 Tesla Model S Dashboard Display

Yahoo! Logo (2013)

Fonts In Frequent Use

In addition to the typefaces represented by our featured Uses and Users of the Year (most of which are shown in the main sidebar at the top of the page), the font families shown at right appeared most frequently in 2013 designs posted to Fonts In Use. This list only represents work in our Collection, so these certainly aren’t the most prevalent typefaces in all design today — that would be overlooking system/app bundled fonts, Core Web fonts, freebies, other perennially popular typefaces like Gotham, Interstate, and Neutraface, and revivals of classics like Caslon and Garamond. Yet they do reflect part of the current design zeitgeist: all sans serifs, most (except Alright Sans) are firmly in the static Gothic, Grotesque, or Geometric models. An odd outlier is ITC Serif Gothic. Nick Sherman has discovered that Lubalin and Di Spigna’s 1972 design is seeing a curious revival.

Early Users

Our observant co-editor Florian also noted these early adopters of typefaces newly released in 2013 or late 2012: Macula for Colin Smith, Audree for AwardsLine, Berlingske for A-Magasinet, Line for Rodeo, Domaine for Designing News, Magasin for Elle Decoration, MVB Solitaire for Assembly, FF Quixo for Publishing Design syllabus, FF Mark for Bench, Baton for L’Histoire du Diable, FF Dora for Gewone Letters, Landmark for Parc Olympique, Vinter for Queensland Ballet, and LL Circular for a number of uses.

What did we miss? With over 2,000 Uses added to the site in 2013, there is surely more typography worth honoring. What were your favorite font uses of 2013? Link ’em up in the comments below. And if your favorite design is not already in the Collection, now is the time to contribute. Your participation is vital to this endeavor.

“Prestige” poster for UK use

Festival Titling was designed by Phillip Boydell and cut by Monotype in 1950 as the official display face for the Festival of Britain, a national exhibition held throughout the United Kingdom in the summer of 1951. The typeface was used for all official Festival announcements and was made available for general use in 1952.

A shadowed fat face (or lettering?) usually accompanied the Festival logo, representing the year. I don’t know it, but Ingeborg Block, an unrelated contemporary typeface, is similar.

The Festival of Britain was organised by the government to give Britons a feeling of recovery in the aftermath of war and to promote the British contribution to science, technology, industrial design, architecture and the arts.

This 16 page guide, designed by the London Press Exchange, features the Festival Star motif by Abram Games.

This pamplet uses an inline version of Festival Titling.

An exhibition about product design in the Fifties.

Photographs by Teresa Siebein, Düsseldorf
Exhibition design by Jörg Maria Gimmler, Frankfurt
Client: Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken