Roode Bioscoop program posters
Contributed by Nick Sherman
on Mar 28th, 2020. Artwork published in
circa 2017
.
Seasonal poster series promoting the program of upcoming events at the Roode Bioscoop (Red Cinema), a venue for music, theater, and poetry in Amsterdam.
The posters form a solid wall of type with Helvetica Ultra Compressed, supported by the normal width of Helvetica (or is that Neue Haas Grotesk?) in a bold weight for smaller type.
Over on Flickr, Florian commented:
Another example where Bitstream’s digitization (Swiss 911) is much better than Linotype’s “official” Helvetica Ultra Compressed which is used here – see diacritics like Ü, É, Ç (way too tall for a display type, squeezed in AÇAI to fit) or the faulty spacing for ‘AR’ (fixed in this use).
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Source: twitter.com License: All Rights Reserved.
Source: twitter.com License: All Rights Reserved.
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Source: twitter.com License: All Rights Reserved.
1 Comment on “Roode Bioscoop program posters”
Here’s an illustration of my comment, with a visual comparison of Linotype’s Helvetica Ultra Compressed and Bitstream’s Swiss 911 Ultra Compressed featuring some diacritics, as seen on MyFonts. This font distributor used to have a helpful “Alternate cuts” feature that linked different versions of the same typeface design, like these two. Unfortunately, it was sacrificed in a recent overhaul – heaven forbid customers find the version that’s best for their purposes.
The erroneously spaced AR pair appears to be a problem with the MyFonts renderer and not with the font, at least I don’t see this issue on Linotype’s site. Their presentation leaves a lot to be desired in another way: The credits for the Ultra Compressed read “Designed by Linotype Design Studio in 1961 / Max Miedinger”. In fact it was drawn by Hans-Jürg Hunziker under Matthew Carter’s supervision at Mergenthaler Linotype, and released in 1968 for the Linofilm typesetter, following the Compressed and Extra Compressed that were designed by Carter in 1966.