Talk Talk – “My Foolish Friend” single cover
The cover painting on this single sleeve is by James Marsh, whose work adorned many of Talk Talk’s releases. I don’t know if he was responsible for the typography, too. The self-titled debut EP from the year before had featured a logo composed from plain sans serif capitals, in contrasting weights and sizes, dynamically arranged in a way that is reminiscent of 1920s constructivism. Some of the letterforms were stretched, a treatment that is echoed throughout Talk Talk’s discography, see e.g. Natural History (1990).
The type for “My Foolish Friend” is much more straightforward. No stretching, no frills, just one style in all caps. It’s DIN 16, i.e. inclined letterforms for technical drawings, with rounded terminals. Defined by the Standardisation Committee of German Industry in 1919, DIN 16 predates the nowadays better known DIN 1451 by twelve years. Letraset had issued a version for dry-transfer lettering sometime before 1976. I assume this is what was used here, in 1983. According to MoMA, some ten years later –
Erik Spiekermann noticed that the few available versions of DIN Schriften had become popular with graphic designers because of their “lean, geometric lines,” and he suggested to [Albert-Jan] Pool that he consider reviving and redesigning them.
FF DIN was released in 1995, but it took another another 15 years before Pool completed FF DIN Round, his interpretation and expansion of the inclined DIN 16 and its upright sibling, DIN 17.
The aforementioned band logo is reproduced on the back, at a small size. The images show the German edition by EMI Electrola. The UK version is largely identical.
A Letraset sheet with DIN 16 m. The English manufacturer also carried the upright DIN 17 m.
2 Comments on “Talk Talk – “My Foolish Friend” single cover”
What does the “m” stand for? Is it mittelshrift? Was there also a Din 16 condensed?
The m with over- and underline stands for Micronorm. Here’s a definition from D. Simmonds, Charts & Graphs. Guidelines for the visual presentation of statistical data, 1980:
These 9 line widths were color-coded for easier use (Violet, Red, White, Yellow, Brown, Blue, Orange, Green, Gray), on technical pens like the Rapidograph and elsewhere. The depicted Letraset sheet has “orange” glyphs, i.e. their size is 10 mm, with 1.0 mm line thickness. See also the Wikipedia entry on ISO 216 which mentions the technical drawing line widths specified in ISO 128, and the matching technical pen widths as specified in ISO 9175–1.