Style frames from the Criterion Channel's 2024 John Waters film collection. The collection featured the films Hairspray, Female Trouble, Polyester, Cry-Baby, Serial Mom, Multiple Maniacs, Cecil B. Demented, and Desperate Living.

Each month the Criterion Channel releases a handful of curated collections. Each collection getting some stylized typographic treatments used for a teaser trailer and style frames (thumbnails) for the collection as a whole plus a few select films within the collection.

The John Waters collection is branded with lettering in the style of mid-century, hand painted advertising and signage.

The lettering designs feature bold, condensed, sans serif type complimented with various brush script fonts and a few dingbat ornaments.

The large titles use Linotype's Flyer (a.k.a. Filmotype Flyer), while the smaller names and titles use Red Top by Studio K. The brush script fonts used throughout work seamlessly together because they all come from House Industries’ beautifully crafted Sign Painter family. Fonts used from that family include Brush, Script, Upright and Slant [or rather Dom Diagonal Bold, see comments].

In addition to the typography, also peppered in are arrows and underlines from House’s Ad Art (also from the Sign Painter family) and a star ornament found in Gutterball, from House’s Housearama font family.

Portland's unofficial slogan “Keep Portland Weird” appears in a few different styles and formats, but most commonly using Ad Lib, or lettering based on Ad Lib, and in yellow on black.

The original two-line slogan, on the side of Millennium Music, has “Weird” being based on Ad Lib (the E and D especially), and “Keep Portland” in a somewhat generic signwriter’s sans serif. The later and more popular one-line version is a little closer to Ad Lib throughout.

The slogan is an obvious opportunity for a variety of fan art and merchandising, much of which still retains Ad Lib, and often Antique Olive.

Brian Kidd who wants to Make Portland Weird (Again), on a T-shirt. This time it’s Ad Lib, with what looks like squeezed House Brush.

Apparently the site of the original “Keep Portland Weird” slogan: Music Millennium.

In the spirit of the original two-line slogan, Antique Olive for “Keep Portland” and Ad Lib for “Weird”, with the motif repeated in a few different colour ways.

Bumper Sticker design, again with Antique Olive and Ad Lib

Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957 is the catalogue accompanying the 2015 exhibition of the same name. Featuring works by more than ninety artists and extensive archival materials, the exhibition was organized by Helen Molesworth with Ruth Erickson and premiered at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Boston. It then traveled to the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio.

From the ICA/Boston's exhibition page:

A small, experimental liberal arts college founded in 1933, Black Mountain College (BMC) has exerted enormous influence on the postwar cultural life of the United States. Influenced by the utopian ideals of the progressive education movement, it placed the arts at the center of liberal arts education and believed that in doing so it could better educate citizens for participation in a democratic society. It was a dynamic crossroads for refugees from Europe and an emerging generation of American artists. Profoundly interdisciplinary, it offered equal attention to painting, weaving, sculpture, pottery, poetry, music, and dance.

…

Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957 focuses on how, despite its brief existence, BMC became a seminal meeting place for many of the artists, musicians, poets, and thinkers who would become the principal practitioners in their fields of the postwar period. Figures such as Anni and Josef Albers, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauschenberg, Elaine and Willem de Kooning, Buckminster Fuller, Ruth Asawa, Robert Motherwell, Gwendolyn and Jacob Knight Lawrence, Charles Olson, and Robert Creeley, among many others, taught and studied at BMC. Teaching at the college combined the craft principles of Germany’s revolutionary Bauhaus school with interdisciplinary inquiry, discussion, and experimentation, forming the template for American art schools. While physically rooted in the rural South, BMC formed an unlikely cosmopolitan meeting place for American, European, Asian, and Latin American art, ideas, and individuals. The exhibition argues that BMC was as an important historical precedent for thinking about relationships between art, democracy, and globalism. It examines the college’s critical role in shaping many major concepts, movements, and forms in postwar art and education, including assemblage, modern dance and music, and the American studio craft movement—influence that can still be seen and felt today.

The catalogue's eclectic typography reflects the radical, utopian, and idiosyncratic pedagogy of Black Mountain College, combining multiple typefaces — many from Jeff Levine — to surprising effect.

The exhibition title is set in a mix of Eckhardt Sans JNL and House Brush from House Industries’ Sign Painter collection. The subtitle is set in Sign Department JNL.

The introductory essay is set in Caslon. Subsequent essays are set in Chalet Book, and catalogue entries are set in Geometric Slabserif 712. A third typeface by Jeff Levine, Moving Van JNL, is used throughout for subheads and catalogue bylines.

An advertisement announcing the Simpsons Store App which was released on July 6, 2015.

“Woo-Hoo!” is set in Piekos FX BB, “Simpsons Store App” uses Doohickey on the upper portion and an all-caps Framistat on the lower portion. The action bubbles feature House Brush, and the remaining text uses Mr Mamoulian.

Kang & Kodos #1 is the ninth issue of Simpson Comics One-Shot Wonders, a line of one-off comics. Each issue features a random character, with every story focusing on that character.

On the front cover, the names of Kang & Kodos are set in Ed Interlock. “Probing today’s issues” looks like Franklin Gothic Extra Condensed.

On the back cover, “Rigel VII” is set in House Slant, “Spend your next vacation on” in House Showcard, and the other text in House Brush. The disclaimer shown below is in the Light version of Futura Condensed.

One of Gail Anderson’s first projects as Creative Director of Design at SpotCo, a NYC-based advertising agency that focuses on the entertainment industry.

For this new cover, Rodrigo Corral picks up the typeface that he has already used for another Shteyngart book: the energetic brush caps from House Industries’ Sign Painter font kit. Super Sad True Love Story and its cover design is also cited at the side, suggesting a directory-like thumb index. From this color palette, blue is used for the large tear drop which fills the cover and holds the type.

Although the letterforms are evocative of handlettering, they all stem from fonts and are digitally arranged. In addition to House Brush, there is also a similar, bolder style for the title (unidentified; Avalanche comes close), and Signalist for the author’s name.

Our tools allow us to knead letterforms and bend them into shape, and the result here is not terrible (if you don’t look too closely at Signalist’s caps and the ‘g’). Still, this concept could have been more convincingly realized by a lettering artist, who can create a tailored solution, unencumbered by the constraints of fonts. Type generally works best when used in the way it was designed for: in straight lines, undistorted.

via Casual Optimist’s Book Covers of Note November 2014

Art & Design: Rodrigo Corral Studio
Creative Director: Paolo Pepe

A rendition of the Serenity Prayer for the To Resolve Project — new year’s resolutions as iPhone wallpaper.

Subscriber cover

Ever since Tom Alberty became the Design Director of New York earlier this year, the cover typography has sprung to life. Alberty was previously the Art Director at GQ, a magazine that may use more fonts than anyone else. 2012’s New York covers have mostly stuck to the their core typefaces: ITC Franklin, Egyptian Bold Condensed, and Miller. However, Helvetica makes an appearance every so often, mostly for special issues, and Futura has started to show up, inside and out.

The Fall Preview is Alberty’s most energetic cover yet; it’s arguably the magazine’s most playful since 2004’s major redesign, led by Luke Hayman.

Newsstand cover

Ed Gothic and Ed Roman, from House Industries’s 5-font Ed Benguiat set, are unexpected but pitch perfect. By avoiding the quirkier sides of the Benguiat family (notably, Ed Interlock), the whimsy here is under control. It generates enough excitement without being goofy. Also, it avoids the trap of becoming a poster — something many city magazines fall prey too — by injecting it’s core sans serif, ITC Franklin, and by keeping the type sizes in check.

To see several years of New York covers, check out their issue archive.