The masthead in Honda debuted in Issue 27 (vol. IV, no. 1). The secondary typeface is ITC Souvenir.

Debuting in 1976 as The Dragon, the magazine was variously also known as Dragon Magazine and Dragon. It was (or became) TSR’s monthly magazine in support of the immensely successful table top role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons in its various editions and successors, as well as other RPGs (published by TSR and others).

Dragon launched with hand-drawn lettering for its masthead (and a very zine feel), but from issue 27 (July 1979) onwards the masthead for The Dragon was set in ITC Honda. Honda, or lettering based on it, was used for the masthead until issue 274 (published in 2000). A redesign that starts with Issue 181 recreates the masthead with a stretched lettering, still base on Honda. Another redesign based on Honda again begins with issue 225 (see below).

Issue 204 has the surtitle “American gothic humor in gaming”, a dropped D in Dragon, and an airbrushed cover that is a pastiche of Grant Wood’s American Gothic. The man is wielding the traditional pitchfork (a trident), but now both figures are wearing merchandise tee-shirts: TSR (the owners of Dungeons & Dragons) for the man and Dragon for the woman (in, of course, Honda). The woman offers the traditional stern look and a set of polyhedral dice.

Issue 225 (January 1996) marks another redesign of the masthead, but still based on the Honda font: modelling the lettering in 3D and on a curve. This issue also introduces what I might be tempted to call “1990s DTP style”; that is, many fonts and colours and angles brought together with exuberance. I have peeked into the covers of the next few issues and can report that this style continues. The font choices, or at least the ones I can identify, for issue 225 also have a very 1990s vibe: stretched and rotated Helvetica Black Oblique for “Building a Better PC”, stretched Lithos with a shadow for “I’m OK, You’re One Dimensional”, Tekton with an offset shadow effect for “Back In The Saddle (Again)”, Omnia (with a scaled “the”) for “the greyhawk grimoires”, and stretched Charme for “Campaign Classics”. Issue 273 from July 2000 was the last to feature a logo based on Honda.

Issue 37 ft. a logo with flat fill and thin contour

Honda also used for the secondary text here, with the flying frogs aka Awful Green Things, in their own box, so the text is over a flat background.

The colour of the masthead changes from issue to issue, often to suit the artwork. Here picking out the Dragon’s eye and the harpist’s highlights. Secondary type is in Baskerville AI.

“Dragon” in outline only, over the artwork, for a sort of transparency effect. Secondary type is in ITC Zapf Book.

Starting with Issue 128, the word “Magazine” was added to the logo, shown in tracked-out caps from Eurostile Bold Extended.

Since Issue 181 the Dragon masthead is stretched into custom lettering, but still based on Honda. A gradient fill and a shadow also become part of the masthead. Illustrated here in Issue 204, about which I’ve said more in the text. Secondary type is in Antique Olive.

Flashy redesign debuts in Issue 225. The stretched “Dragon” masthead is back to more conventional Honda, but modelled in 3D.

Front panel of the US retail box for Wolfenstein 3D (DOS) (Floppy Disk Version, 1992, distributed by GT Software, v1.4 (04-30462)). Art by Julie Bell. Title set in Cathedral.

From Wikipedia:

Wolfenstein 3D is a first-person shooter video game developed by id Software and published by Apogee Software and FormGen. Originally released on May 5, 1992, for DOS, it was inspired by the 1981 Muse Software video game Castle Wolfenstein, and is the third installment in the Wolfenstein series. In Wolfenstein 3D, the player assumes the role of Allied spy William "B.J." Blazkowicz during World War II as he escapes from the Nazi German prison Castle Wolfenstein and carries out a series of crucial missions against the Nazis.

The game's title is set in Cathedral. Additional text on packaging is set in ITC Machine and Helvetica Condensed. Additional text on label of v1.2 diskette is set in Helvetica and Times. Additional text on label of v1.4 diskette is set in Gill Sans. The text featured on the in-game HUD or status bar appears to have been based on ITC Honda.

Back panel of the US retail box for Wolfenstein 3D (DOS) (Floppy Disk Version, 1992, distributed by GT Software, v1.4 (04-30462)). Title set in Cathedral. Additional text is set in ITC Machine and Helvetica Condensed.

Media for Wolfenstein 3D (DOS) (Floppy Disk Version, 1992, distributed by GT Software, v1.4 (04-30462)). Additional text on label is set in Gill Sans.

Cover of Wolfenstein 3D (DOS) (Original Mail Order, 1992, distributed by Apogee Software, v1.2). Art by Ken Rieger. Title set in Cathedral.

Media for Wolfenstein 3D (DOS) (Original Mail Order, 1992, distributed by Apogee Software, v1.2): Extremely rare "Episodes 1-3" v1.2 mail order diskette. Additional text on label is set in Helvetica and Times.

The text featured on the in-game HUD or status bar appears to have been based on ITC Honda.

The title track of Lighthouse’s One Fine Morning album from 1971 was a hit, not only in the band’s home country Canada, but also in the Netherlands. The cover of the Dutch single release by Vertigo Records uses tightly spaced Eurostile Extended for the titles. For the band name, the uncredited designer used ITC Honda’s caps in outline, and arranged them with tight-and-touching spacing. Any interletter space was eliminated by nesting the I into the L and interlocking the T between the two H’s. The square dot on the I is a customization that furthers the concept of compactness – Honda’s dots are round.

[More info on Discogs]

The Black School is an “experimental art school teaching radical black history”. Founded by Joseph Cuillier III and Shani Peters, this multifaceted school is building a community center, hosting festivals, running workshops, and more — all with the goal of creating agents of change. The founders are responsible for the org’s look, with help from Mitchell Reese Johnson and web designer Kacy George. Generously spaced ITC Honda serves as the brand's wordmark and headline type, balanced with Poppins for body copy. These two work well together to create a feeling of strength while remaining approachable.

From The Black School website:

The Black School brand identity is inspired by the history of independent community run schools throughout Black history. The visual identity is anchored with the recurring motif of composition notebooks to playfully reference a common experience for American school children. The brand was designed to unify a broad range of activities and initiatives by The Black School.

Ogg Display joins ITC Honda for event flyers.

Poppins serves as a secondary typeface for web buttons and text.

ITC Honda is used for the logotype of Chiemseer, a beer brand from Rosenheim, Bavaria.

Just like Fanfare and similar hybrid typefaces, Honda is a good choice when you want to channel some of the qualities associated with blackletter – here: traditional, rustic, crafted, German – without going full fraktur, bypassing ornate capitals, an ſ (long s) and other legibility hurdles. Honda was designed by Ronné Bonder and Tom Carnase, probably inspired by typefaces like Rudolf Koch’s Wallau (1930) or Louis Oppenheim’s Fanfare (1927). It debuted in 1970 as one of the first releases by ITC.

Chiemseer crown cap.

An earlier label shows Clairvaux for the logo. This interpretation of early Gothic writing styles was made as part of Linotype’s “Type before Gutenberg”” program “in 1990. It’s the only published typeface design by calligrapher Herbert Maring (1923–2012). “Hell” (lit. bright, i.e. lager beer) is in a beefed up rendition of Hermann Zapf’s Medici Script, a precursor to his ITC Zapf Chancery.

The fact that the beer is named Chiemseer and that the label shows the Chiemsee lake led to a lawsuit. It was objected that the brewery is in fact not located on the Chiemsee.

Since June 2016, the beer comes with new labels. The name Chiemseer remained, but is now accompanied by a new image, a prominent disclosure “Gebraut in Rosenheim am Inn” (in Droid Serif), and a pointer to see the reverse, which shows a map indicating the location of Rosenheim (about 25 km west of the lake).

Crate from 2014, with the brewery’s name in Minion Black. Formerly doing business as Chiemgauer Brauhaus, it was renamed to Rosenheimer Spezialitätenbrauerei following the lawsuit.

Historias Part. I is the first project of the year by Parisian collective and music label La Ligne Bleue. Dor is exploring more of his Spanish heritage with a mix of French and Spanish. ITC Honda is used as the main type along with Kabel.

Album art designed by Soimadou Ibrahim-Aliamane.

The second book from Ron Goulart’s Odd Jobs series, with cover art by Josh Kirby (1928–2001). From the back cover:

His name was Adolph Hibbler and he had escaped the doom of Hitler’s Reich by inventing the cryogenic deep freeze long before the rest of the world. As a human icicle he had been just a circus sideshow for many decades until he finally thawed out—in the 21st Century.

The trouble began with a series of mysterious events and the government had to call in Odd Jobs, Inc. But when Jake and Hildy Pace started uncovering the clues they found an odder job than any previous capers.

For a topic this bizarre, DAW Books had to call in ITC Honda. It’s in fact a pretty good choice: With its traces of modernized blackletter, Honda alludes to faces that were popular in Germany in the 1930s (cf. Wallau, Potsdam, Tannenberg), while at the same time offering the readability needed for an American paperback cover from the 1980s.

Weird type to go with weird illustration, for the cover of Michael Bishop’s debut novel.

ITC Honda is used with its alternates for f, r, t, s. Most of these are superior to the default forms. Not only does the tailed t make for more cohesive word images. The alternate f and s also blend in better than the default forms which are crammed and top-heavy, respectively. They’re not without flaws, though: f is still big-headed and only works when not followed by another ascending glyph. And s is not wide enough at the top, just like c and e are too narrow at the bottom. They cause gaps, as one can see in the author’s name. For an example how to make Honda work – by letting problematic pairs overlap – see The Nightwalker.

The typography furthermore presents a peculiar variation of title case: Those words that are typically capitalized are here set in all caps.

Cover art by Gene Szafran.

ITC Honda in outline and cut in wood, featuring the alternate g with closed loop and a lowered initial W (Bradley-style). Chances are that this piece of lettering is based on Corel’s digitization (1992) which included exactly this combination of glyphs for a, r, and g.

Spotted by birx in 2010 and posted to the Wandertypografie Flickr group. Wanderweg is German for “hiking trail”. See more trail type on the dedicated website maintained by Scribble Tone.

Strong type in an uncompromising layout for the cover of Priyamvada Gopal’s latest book. All text is set in black caps from the ambiguous ITC Honda and the no-nonsense Gothic No. 13. The stack of red bars is interrupted twice to open the view to the depiction of an uprising.

Insurgent Empire shows how Britain’s enslaved and colonial subjects were active agents in their own liberation. What is more, they shaped British ideas of freedom and emancipation back in the United Kingdom. — Verso Books

Source: rover.ebay.com Image: AshurBooks. License: All Rights Reserved.

Prolific book jacket designer Lawrence Ratzkin was fond of blackletter type, as well as ITC Honda, Ronné Bonder and Tom Carnase’s 1970 “grayletter” with equal parts fraktur and roman sans serif.

Source: www.flickr.com Photo: Stephen Coles. Sample from The ITC Typeface Collection, 1980. License: All Rights Reserved.

Ratzkin used a couple alternates for this tight lockup, including a t that I would argue is much better than ITC Honda’s default version, and which tucks neatly into the adjacent w. The standard looped k is replaced with the alternate roman form.

Unfortunately, the current digital version of ITC Honda is missing all eight of the alternates available in the original phototype version. The sample below shows what this headline would look like in the digital font. You can see why the alt t really came in handy.

Photo: Stephen Coles. License: Public Domain.

ITC Honda (1970) is used for the logo of Snap Dragon. “The snappy dragon-feeding game” was first published by Tomy Corporation, then a subsidiary of Coleco Industries, Inc., Amsterdam, NY, in 1987. The game was also known as De gulzige draken (Dutch) and Dragons affamés (French).

What’s all the grumbling about? These dragons are r·e·a·l·l·y hungry! See how fast you can feed your dragon the most marbles. But wait – the blue ones taste better to dragons than the orange ones. Better grab those first! Grab one marble at a time and snap it back into your dragon’s tummy. Hurry, the dragon with the fullest tummy – and the most points – wins.

Honda is set on a winding baseline, with a thick white outline and a red contour. The version used here is distinguished by the a with the triangular counter (cf. Wallau). This glyph is sadly not included in the digital fonts by ITC and Corel, but was available as alternate in the original film version. It has survived in the æ glyph of ITC’s digitization.

The subheading is in Kabel Black, the description in Helvetica. The Coleco Games logo uses caps from Harry [edit: no, it’s Horatio, see comments] and the Tomy wordmark appears to be in Frankfurter.

Signage on "Access Bail Bonds", 122 S Salisbury St, Raleigh, NC. Photo taken April 10, 2018.

Appearances of Death. A Luis Mendoza Mystery by Dell Shannon, i.e. Elizabeth Linington. Published by William Morrow and Company, Inc., New York, 1977. Jacket design by Lawrence Ratzkin, using ITC Honda by Ronné Bonder and Tom Carnase (1970).

http://www.radarada.co

The anti-design trend hits the gig poster scene. More Picnic posters here.

Juergen Teller's new book is both an uncompromising journal and a poignant engagement with the uncharted world that lies behind the outward glamour of the fashion industry. Taken over the period of a year in the doorway of the photographer's London studio, these portraits of models, most of whorm are unknown, are at profoundly moving and disquieting. — DIARY LYLYBYE