The Philadelphia Museum of Art, in collaboration with design studio Gretel, rebuilt its identity with the goal of putting the institution in direct conversation with the city that surrounds it. Typography is the primary device for achieving this. The type palette mainly works on two levels: outside-and-inside, or community-and-institution.

Inspired by Philadelphia’s rich visual texture of storefronts, street vendors, and murals, the vernacular type palette brings the voice of Philly into the museum and injects the identity system with contrast and spontaneity. The current library is curated (exemplified by the likes of Shatter, Cooper Black, and Balloon), but it is designed to continue growing over time. Each of these display typefaces can be used on various seasonal activations, or specifically assigned to exhibitions or departmental roles. ITC Pioneer was used for the recent exhibition The Time is Always Now, a survey of contemporary Black and African diasporic figurative art. Purple Haze is the designated typeface for PMA Members, and Megazoid is used for PMA Kids.

On the other hand, the institutional typographic voice serves an evergreen role: echoing the museum’s classical character while embodying Philadelphia’s industrial sensibility. The core typeface, Fairmount Serif—named for the Fairmount neighborhood—was custom-drawn by Ryan Bugden after a study of Philadelphia’s typographic history. Searching for a balance between the industrial structure of 1930s American sans-serifs and a classical features brought Hess Neobold forward as a key reference. Its designer Sol Hess attended PMSIA—the precursor to the museum—and later succeeded Frederic Goudy as Philadelphia-based Lanston Monotype’s type director. Fairmount Serif evolves the Hess Neobold model while incorporating more contemporaneous industrial cues. It remains relatively neutral alongside the museum’s broad palette of display faces while providing a distinct, authoritative voice of its own. Fairmount Serif was also used as a starting point in rendering the various institutional logos.

For the more workhorse level, Klarheit Grotesk serves as the museum’s body text typeface. It is set at small sizes across branding, materials, signage, and exhibition text.

See more images in Gretel’s case study.

Mockups of exhibition catalogs

Banners.

Seasonal program.

The title sequence used in Gaspar Noé’s Cannes-selected movie Enter the Void has amazed me over the years in terms of typography and graphic design, and thanks to a friend of mine, Puz, (some of) these fonts have been identified.

It was created by Tom Kan, a Japanese designer based in Paris. From Ian Albinson’s interview with Kan for Art of the Title:

The sequence is a typographer’s wet dream (or alternatively their nightmare). How were the various fonts and characters chosen?

The choice of typefaces came rather naturally. After coming up with a large selection in line with the film’s mood, we simply chose the ones that best suited the characters and the personalities of those in the team. Gaspar wanted each title to reflect the person it concerned. It was a beautiful homage and proof of his respect for the members of the team — a way to thank them.

Many typefaces and designs did not get used because the time limit was set — the sound mix was already done and it was impossible to extend. I think we used only 60% of the designs, all in all.

Every typeface used in the sequence seems to be a reference to other famous film title or poster fonts. What was the typeface you selected for your own credit and why?

We appropriated different typefaces, but we never wanted to copy the titles from other films in an obvious way since I thought that would be misleading. For my own credit, I went in many different directions: aged typefaces in metal, Kanji and Japanese calligraphy, techno typography… In the end, I let Gaspar choose and he went with the biggest, most legible type!

Watch the title sequence on YouTube, or right below (epilepsy/flashing lights warning):

Futura Extra Bold Condensed in all caps is the primary typeface for the credits. Here it’s used in combination with Kozuka Gothic for Japanese, alongside some logos.

Music credits include Egyptienne Medium Condensed, Garamond, Eurostile, Bodoni Condensed, Neue Helvetica 93, Futura, and Helvetica Condensed. It’s unclear if the LFO logo uses a font (Disco Deck is similar) or whether it’s custom drawn.

In addition to Futura Extra Bold Condensed, the logos of the production and distribution companies feature Euphoric (Wild Bunch) and Futura Extra Bold (Fidelité).

Producer credits feature FB Agency, Kozuka Gothic, ITC Machine, Futura Display, stretched and slanted Woodblock, and Antique Olive Nord

The names of the co-producers are set in Egyptienne Medium Condensed, Univers Ultra Condensed, Futura, an unidentified font similar to Crown Title, two unidentified stencil(ed) fonts, and Trajan.

More Egyptienne Medium Condensed for Suzanne Girard

Manager credits feature Haettenschweiler, Council, Neue Helvetica Extended (?), Clarendon, Pump Triline, Fiorello, Eurostile, Thorowgood Sans Shaded, and Futura Condensed.

The name of location manager Masahiro Hondo in Glaser Stencil serves as a mask.

Bank Gothic with rainbow glow effect for Lucio Tomaro

Photography credits with slanted Bank Gothic (Benoît Debie), bold italic City with added and extended top and baseline serifs (Gaspar Noé), TFAvian (Akira Kanno), outlined Futura (Yasushi Miyata), Bell Gothic (Jacques Bernier), and Franklin Gothic Extra Condensed (Yves Le Peillet)

Art credits featuring an unidentified blocky unicase face with 3D bevel effect similar to Mark (Marc Caro), FF Vortex (Kikuo Ohta), another unidentified blocky sans (Jean Carrière), and Zeppelin (Nicoletta Massone)

The dripping letters for Tony Crosbie appear to be custom(ized) – Shlop is a similar ready-made font.

Sound and editor credits with Eurostile (Ken Yasumoto), stretched Ironwood (Ryotaro Harada), contoured Nasalization (Claude Lahaye), an upright LCD typeface, probably Digital (Thomas Bangalter), a heavily modified Sonic or another font inspired by the Star Trek TNG logo (Lars Ginzel), Galledis with hyperextended lines (Gaspar Noé), modified SF Archery Black (Marc Boucrot), Zaius, a typeface family emulating the Planet of the Apes movie series logo (Jerome Pesnel), and ITC Machine (Pierre Buffin).

The fonts used for these cards include an unidentified inline face similar to Rubaiyat and Gothicum (Geoffroy Niquet), SF Archery Black (Yann de Cadoudal), OCR-A (Nicolas Delval), Mexcellent (Xavier Allard), fractured caps from a bold sans, possibly Compacta Black (Julien Aullas), Synchro (Bastien Laurent), Helvetica Rounded Bold Condensed (Anne-Sophie Bertrand), and an unidentified squarish sans similar to SB Carbon, Resistance Is Lowered or Apollo Rocket (Loris Paillier).

City Bold, slanted, with double contour and extended baseline serifs, for Tom Kan, Director of Typography

Gaspar Noé in outlined caps from Futura Extra Bold Condensed, without accent on the E

The blackletter typeface chosen for Lucile Hadžihalilović is Linotext (or Mariage, Wedding Text) with some modifications: e and c got bottom serifs and the swash in v was moved from the left to the right stem,

Paz de la Huerta gets various typographic treatments, including Eagle (in a weight between Bold and Black), Futura Dot with Citadel Script, outlined Egyptienne Bold Extended, and ITC Neon.

The Japanese transcription of Paz dela Huerta’s name (パス・デ・ラ・ウエルタ) appears to be Hiragino Maru Gothic or similar, with added contour.

Nathaniel Brown’s name is shown in Pump, ITC Bolt, Aachen, West Barnum Block filled with stars and stripes, and ITC Lubalin Graph Demi.

The fonts chosen for Cyril Roy include Aachen, American Text, Monotype Garamond, and at least two Japanese ones.

The MICR-inspired face used for Olly Alexander is handmade, as confirmed byo Tom Kan. Other fonts include Compacta and all-caps ITC Bolt.

The fonts used for Masato Tanno are Akzidenz-Grotesk Stencil and Ainsdale. The others are yet unidentified.

Gothicum and a (custom?) stencil version of Aachen for Ed Spear, Helvetica Rounded and Neue Helvetica 95 for Emily Alyn Lind, more Helvetica Rounded, an unidentified Japanese font, and Eagle for Jesse Kuhn and Nobu Imai

More ITC Neon and Helvetica Rounded for Sakiko Fukuhara. The bitmap font is 04b_08.

Sarah Stockbridge is set in Haettenschweiler with hyper-extended glyphs).

The names of Janice Sicotte-Beliveau and Stuart Miller are shown in Cooper Black, Impact Wide, Monterey and ITC Officina Serif, Braggadocio, Fiedler Gothic, and Blackoak.

Yemi Carol is presented in Impact Wide, Helvetica Rounded, and a Japanese Maru Gothic. The font shown at the bottom right is unidentified.

Several of the fonts used for Gaspar Noé’s name are yet unidentified. This includes alll fonts in the top row and the left one in the second row, which is similar to Moore Computer and Data 70. Other fonts include ITC Lubalin Graph, Futura Extra Bold Condensed, and Eagle.

Front cover of the album for all formats (LP, CD, digital), with designed band name and album title

Agusa is a Swedish progressive / psychedelic rock band. Högtid is their debut album, released in 2014 on LP (by Kommun2), CD (by Transubstans Records), and in digital form.

The cover was designed by Peter Wallgren. The front contains a design with the artist and album name in a circular logo. This applies to all formats.

The back cover of the LP and CD show photos of the four musicians, surrounded by the text “AGUSA” four times, and the musicians’ first names in Pump Triline. This font is also used on the spine of the CD digipak, but not on the LP spine.

There is a difference between the LP and CD back covers. The LP has handwritten track titles and credits. The CD has the track titles (including a track that is not on the LP) and credits in Giddyup. The CD itself has the track titles in handwritten script.

Listen to the album on the Agusa Bandcamp page. For more information on the band, check their Facebook page.

[More info on Discogs]

Back cover and spine of the CD digipak

Jacket of the hardback edition by Thames & Hudson, 1980, featuring Gregory in the Pool (Paper pool 4)

The Paper Pools book presents a series of paintings by David Hockney. A well-known series by the painter, it was produced in Los Angeles, California, a location that marks the colors of the series.

From Beaux Books:

An illustrated record of the Paper Pools series of artworks created by Hockney in 1978. The twenty-nine Paper Pool works were made using the paper pulp process, a mix of printmaking and painting, and a new medium for the artist. The images focus on the play of water and light, whilst also recognising the Californian sunshine that Hockney sought. Reproductions of the twenty-nine works are accompanied by preparatory line drawings, polaroids and a text ‘Making Paper Pools’ by the artist.

The book was edited by Nikos Stangos and first published in hardback by Thames and Hudson, London, in 1980, featuring the painting Gregory in the Pool (Paper pool 4) on the dust jacket. Harry N. Abrams published the U.S. edition with a reproduction of Le Plongeur (Paper pool 18). The paperback editions by both Thames & Hudson and Abrams also feature this polyptych painted in 1978 using Hockney’s technique of colored pressed paper pulp. The interest in the medium and type of paper is reflected in the design of the book with an unusual paper, which is similar to the old, rough paper used for some editions of this series.

Jacket of the U.S. hardback edition by Abrams, 1980, featuring Le Plongeur (Paper pool 18)

Back and front cover of the paperback edition by Abrams, New York, again featuring Le Plongeur (Paper pool 18). The same design was also used for the paperback edition by Thames & Hudson, London. Text on the back is set in Univers.

Interior double page spread with a variant on the same theme as the painting used for the cover. This one is titled A Large Diver (Paper Pool 27).

Cover and spine of the U.S. hardback edition by Abrams, 1980. The names of the artist and the publisher are in Pump Triline, the title in Pump.

Title page from the paperback edition by Thames & Hudson, London, with a drawing made in preparation for Gregory in the Pool (Paper pool 4). Here, the title is here set in Pump Triline and David Hockney’s name in the solid style. The roman is Monotype Garamond.

Cover of a menu from Tanzbar Kosmos, Rosenhof, Karl-Marx-Stadt (since 1990 named Chemnitz again) in East Germany. The typeface is Pump Triline, Philip Kelly’s multiline extension of Bob Newman’s Pump (1970), issued by Letraset in 1976. The K initial reminds me of the Atomium, or typefaces like Confetti and Punk.

Artwork for the single “Aire fresc” by Habla de Mí en Presente, including Pump Triline (with a modified i) and Chalet 1970.

The promotion (shown below) is inspired by the interior of a late 1970s magazine. In addition to Chalet 1970, it uses Futura, with Alte Haas Grotesk in the footer info.

Inverserif Heavy in use of the cover of an album by Joël Vandroogenbroeck (1938–2019). The Belgian composer and multi-instrumentalist was a long-time member of the Krautrock band Brainticket. However was recorded by his eponymous group Joel, together with Charly Hörnemann, Dave King, and Todd Canedy, and released in the Coloursound Library. This progressive library label was founded in Munich in 1979 by Gunter Greffenius. Many of the covers – including this one – feature paintings by Waltraud Greffenius.

[More info on Discogs]

What Is Wrong With Grooving currently has a fine copy for sale, and lets you listen to a couple of tracks.

Inverserif is a display typeface released by VGC sometime between 1973 and 1976. The name defines the concept: instead of serifs at the end of stems and arms, the design features notches in the form of bracketed serifs at joins and inside the counters – inversed serifs, so to say. Inverserif comes in five styles (Light, Regular, Heavy, Condensed, Outline), each with an obliqued Italic. Its designer is unknown – if you have any insights, please let us know.

Style overview of the Inverserif family in Graphic Arts Manual by Arno Press, New York, 1980.

The record labels feature the label name in caps from Pump Triline. The track list and the other small print is set in various styles from Univers.

Back cover with bilingual liner notes, also in Univers

Lazyboy ‎– Penguin (2004)

All the fonts your typography teacher has warned you about!

The house bag of Sunday Best Recordings is a smorgasbord of extreme display typefaces; from the ornamented 19th-century classics Romantiques No.2 aka Carnival and No.5 aka Bracelet, to Roger Excoffon’s ingenious Calypso from the 1950s and Michel Jarland’s dreamy Astral from the 1970s, to downright cheesy faces that look as if they are formed out of wood planks (Slapstick) or ties (Necktie). Each on its own is already quite flashy. Together they form a ridiculous cacotypography … that warms the cockles of the font IDer’s heart. To me this looks so colorful, it’s hard to admit that the design is actually in black and white. It’s reminiscent of ads by manufacturers of pre-digital display typefaces like this one by Mecanorma, where every word is competing for attention and yet the message is always the same. The generic sleeve was used for several releases in the mid-2000s. Boomclick’s Follow Love from 2003 might have been the earliest one. Ten years later, it was referenced again for Lazyboy’s Pica Disco. The designer is uncredited.

Originally founded as a leftfield club night in 1995 by Radio 1 DJ and Bestival co-creator Rob da Bank, Sunday Best the label emerged in 1997. New partners Sarah Bolshi & Ben Turner joined in 2000 - Sarah running the label day to day, whilst all three influenced the label's shape and direction. Renowned for its expansive and eclectic roster, as well as an unswerving dedication to the leftfield, roster includes early releases from Grand National, Max Sedgely & Dan le sac vs Scroobius Pip, as well as more recent outputs from the likes of David Lynch, Valerie June & Kitty, Daisy & Lewis. — sundaybest.net

Howdi – The Number One Song In Heaven / Play Dead (2005). The name on the sticker is in Pump Triline.

Subway – Journey (2006)

The Nice Guys is set in 1977. Pump Triline is period correct. That blurred drop shadow, not so much. Harry and rounded frame inspired by these Village People trading cards?

“Where the action is”

Roberto Baden Powell de Aquino (1937–2000) live at Volksbühne Berlin, 2000.

[More info on Discogs]

Photography: Mike Stone

[More info on Discogs]