Stereolab – Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night, The Free Design and The First of the Microbe Hunters album art

Many of the album campaigns for Stereolab were designed by Julian House at Intro. For the artwork for their 1999 LP Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night, House used an all-caps typeface in a retro-futuristic computer/MICR aesthetic. Such a typeface was available as phototype in various versions and under various names incl. Gemini Computer, Gemini (Filmotype), or Sonic. It first appeared around 1965. The original designer is unknown. [update: It was designed by Franco Grignani in 1964.]

Digital interpretations include the freebies Auto Mission (Toto, 2011, derived from Solotype’s Automation Shaded) and BD Geminis (Büro Destruct, 2003, “inspired by an old lettraset (sic) font called Gemini and an old mattel electronics logo”). Neither is early enough nor a perfect match for the Stereolab album art. Chances are that House made, or had made, his own custom digitization based on historical sources. Letterforms like the monolinear ‘E’, ‘F’, ‘S’, ‘X’ are different from a showing of Gemini in the Phil’s Photo catalog. So are the closed ‘A’ and (symmetrical) ‘V’, the humpy ‘P’, or the broad-jawed ‘G’. Other differences can be found in ‘H’, ‘K’, ‘M’, ‘O’, and most numerals. However, all of these glyphs match those found on Franco Grignani’s cover for Pubblicità in Italia, 1964–1965, and, in the case of the straight-legged ‘M’, the cover of The New Improved American (1965).

The typeface reappeared in the artwork for the EPs The Free Design (1999) and The First of the Microbe Hunters (2000) which was also designed by House.