I can see myself at the awards banquet now, telling people they should also turn the card over to see the back. Good thing I couldn’t go.

With a new theatrical version of this book coming out recently, a lot of television and internet sources have been talking and writing about the book and flashing this cover. I thought this version (some other versions use the same artwork, but I was unable to identify the type), which must at least be newer than 1996, used a pretty unique typeface. It turns out it’s Minimal, designed by Keystrokes AKA Douglas Olena for Monotype.

The lowercase glyphs are just alternate version of uppercase letters, and this cover only uses the alternate ‘a’. The designer also created a custom ligature for joining the ‘C’ to the ‘O’ in the author’s name. 

Perhaps nothing (besides Volkswagen and Coke) illustrates the bold new advertising style of the late ’60s and early ’70s better than menswear brand H.I.S. Strong type. Great copy. Nick Nolte (who stars in the ad below).

The company was founded in New York in 1923 as “Honesdale Manufacturing Co.” by Henry I. Siegel from Lublin, Poland. In 1956, as an homage to his father, Jesse Siegel established the H.I.S brand, whose logo is composed of Henry I. Siegel’s initials set in Franklin Gothic, one of the most popular typefaces of the era.

Most images found via Voices of East Anglia and Found in Mom’s Basement.

New official La Boca film poster for the Carol Reed movie The Third Man (1949). Designed for the Dark City Gallery and StudioCanal, there will be two limited edition screenprints available: Metallic Silver & Black (edition of 75), and Blue & Pink (edition of 150). All signed & numbered, and hand-printed in the UK. — debutart.tumblr.com

The primary typeface for this poster is Fanfare (Louis Oppenheim, 1927). Apparently, the designers of La Boca were unhappy with some of its capital letters, so they replaced them with shapes that are derived from the lowercase – see C, M, V and W. The script is Filmotype LaSalle, designed in 1952 by Ray Baker. Looking at a word like ‘Alida’ reveals that Filmotype’s official digitization (Patrick Griffin, Rebecca Alaccari, 2008) – the version that is used here – is superior to competing releases.

Thanks to @monokromfonts for the pointer.

Ryan Dombal’s Daft Punk cover story for Pitchfork can be read and viewed in a special “dynamic” version. Make sure to visit the page, since the screenshots shown here can’t do justice to the browsing experience which comprises a responsive layout with animated sequences, various scrolling effects and flipping characters that are reminiscient of flap displays.

“The challenge was to not only have each of the six books book stand on its own visually and conceptually, but also have them, when pieced together, form a single compelling and illustrative image. Arranged together, the covers create a powerful view of a human head while individual covers deftly convey in graphic shorthand the neurological idiosyncrasies Sacks describes in each book.” — Cardon Webb

Redesign Arabia is “an initiative to bring design, in the widest sense, into the contemporary mainstream life of the Arab region.” The site uses one of the few typeface families that supports both Latin and Arabic writing systems, FF Amman, designed by Yanone for the capital of Jordan. Frutiger Arabic is also used.

A history of the Icelandic character ð (eth) published by Crymogea. Toshi Omagari created this custom eth, which the book’s designer Gunnar Vilhjálmsson calls “the John Travolta eth”. The book also features what may be the first ‘fð’ ligature, designed by Fred Smeijers.

The typeface is Metro Nova, a revival by Omagari of Metro’s original forms, soon to be released by Monotype.

The music video for  Dillon Francis’ “Messages” is using Apple Color Emoji almost exclusively. A milestone in visual communication. 

Re:publica is an annual conference that deals with web-related topics like blogging, social media, digital society and web politics. On the occasion of re:publica 13 which opened it doors in Berlin today, Wortfeld has published a series of historic conference posters, claiming that they were discovered “in the attic of the state archives in Berlin-Dahlem”. The posters purportedly prove that the roots of re:publica go back not only to 2007, but actually a full hundred years, when “engineers, artists, painters and musicians first met in a Berlin machine factory in 1913, under the wary eyes of the Prussian secret police”.

Although there are a couple of details that challenge their authenticity, the posters do a remarkable job at emulating the various historic styles of graphic design. It’s obvious that the designer(s) had lots of fun with these.
The images were published under a CC-by license.

Erste Liga created the visual identity for Meyerinck, a bistro/café in Berlin, by combining a stylized portrait of the namesake with Elena Albertoni’s lovely retro script Nouvelle Vague.

Herman Ze German specializes in German delicacies such as currywurst, bratwurst, and brezel.

Relative Power Of Contemporary States, Nations And Empires.
Copyright by John B. Sparks. Published by Histomap, Inc. Chicago, Ill.
Printed and distributed in the U.S.A. by Rand McNally & Co., 1931.

From the David Rumsey Map Collection.

Festival Titling was designed by Phillip Boydell and cut by Monotype in 1950 as the official display face for the Festival of Britain, a national exhibition held throughout the United Kingdom in the summer of 1951. The typeface was used for all official Festival announcements and was made available for general use in 1952.

A shadowed fat face (or lettering?) usually accompanied the Festival logo, representing the year. I don’t know it, but Ingeborg Block, an unrelated contemporary typeface, is similar.

The Festival of Britain was organised by the government to give Britons a feeling of recovery in the aftermath of war and to promote the British contribution to science, technology, industrial design, architecture and the arts.

The renowned New York based news portal Digg selected LFT Etica as a titling font for their site and mobile application.

Posted as part of a little survey about websites for conferences on typography and graphic design – how do these specialist events present themselves typographically, in 2013?

This is one of my favorites. The ISType website uses Athelas in various styles, sizes and shades; paired with some Neue Helvetica for buttons and the schedule. Light text on a dark background is always a bit tricky on the web. With the gracile shapes of Athelas used big, it works for me here. Mixing the upright with Italics and showing off oldstyle figures sets a typographic tone. The classic black-and-(orange-)red color scheme helps, too. There are nice details like a custom-colored map, or subtle effects on hover and select. The scribbled uppercase ‘S’ for the 2013 identity was inspired by Tablet Gothic Wide ExtraBold.

Webfonts: ✓ (4 styles, self-hosted)
Designer credits: ✓
Typeface credits: ✓

For the branding of the AGI Open Conference in Barcelona back in 2011, Astrid Stavro used SuperVeloz and Helvetica. Playing with the initials of the participants, she used the modular type system as the main character of the identity.

Several versions of the posters emphasized the different speakers. Each name tag had different modular combinations representing the initials of each person. Even the organization badges had different modular combinations for the initial ‘O’.

It is rare to find Superveloz out there; so it is a real treat to see it used so well. 

News feature from the launch issue of Houstonia magazine.