“The Twelve Months of Love”, Playboy, Jan. 1969

2 Comments on ““The Twelve Months of Love”, Playboy, Jan. 1969”

1. Florian Hardwig says:

   Nov 27th, 2021 12:13 pm

   Thanks for sharing, Jeff. This must be a fairly early application of Harem. To our knowledge, it originated at Alphabet Innovations, which was started by Phil Martin in 1969.

   The small differences between repeating letters – see especially the widths of E and T – and the perfect fit of convex and concave shapes suggest that this isn’t a direct use, but rather hand lettering. Or maybe this is a piece of original lettering, and the Harem typeface was inspired by it?!

2. Stephen Coles says:

   Nov 28th, 2022 7:15 am

   The latter is very possible, Florian. Martin derived a lot of his typefaces from existing lettering. Planet of the Apes/Thrust may be another example.