Let ESP Work for You! by Patsy Ruth Welding
Patsy Ruth Welding was a secretary for the Clark County School District, Nevada, who also practiced as a psychic medium. She died in 2008 at the age of 83. In this book published by Dial Press in 1976, Welding shares some insights into extrasensory perception (ESP). You can find reviews on Kirkus and Good Reads.
The plywood-style typeface is Downsie. It was drawn by Ed Benguiat (1927–2020) for Photo-Lettering. Here it’s used in its “A” style, with the triple outlined shade filled in three shades of blue – apparently as a visual metaphor for the deeper levels of consciousness. The accompanying wide grot is unidentified (Edel-Grotesk / Aurora-Grotesk VI–VII and Trade Gothic Extended are only similar). [edit: it’s Photo-Lettering’s Paramount Gothic, see comments.]
2 Comments on “Let ESP Work for You! by Patsy Ruth Welding”
I thought I would help by excluding some contendors. I compared and excluded Termina, Zeppelin, ITC Blair Pro, Resolve Sans, Presicav, and Distancia.
Then I saw the publishing year. It obviously couldn’t have been any of those.
I’m really curious to find out what typeface this is. I like the curve of U with those subtle corners a lot, and that S with horizontal terminal endings is quite unusual as well.
I was too lazy the other day to look up this face in the catalogs by Photo-Lettering, Inc. Since Downsie was exclusively available from this phototypesetting service in New York, it seemed likely that the sans is from their library as well.
And voilà: It’s named Paramount Gothic. This face is shown in the second volume of their Alphabet Thesaurus from 1965 in eight numbered weights (0–6, 8). It’s listed without designer credits – which suggests it was drawn by the PLINC staff, not an external artist. Paramount Gothic offered a number of alternates, including glyphs with round and square dots, single- and two-story a and g, straight- and curved-legged R, bearded and beardless G, normal and wide f and t. As far as I know, there is no digitization. (So far, it seems there hasn’t even been a single mention of it online.)