Farley Mowat (1921–2014) was a popular Canadian author, known for his environmentalism (Never Cry Wolf, also a feature film), humour (The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be, Owls in the Family, The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float), and advocacy for indigenous people (People of the Deer). He was a contrarian with strong views, who responded forcefully to his many critics.

In the Second World War, he joined his local regiment at the age of 18. In the Italian Campaign, he was an infantry platoon commander from the landing in Sicily to the Battle of Ortona, which was infamous for fierce street fighting and heavy casualties. After Ortona, he became an intelligence officer, where his duties included organising food relief for Dutch civilians during the Liberation of the Netherlands. He also selected much of the equipment preserved for monuments and museums, including many of the pieces in the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. And No Birds Sang (1979) is about his personal experiences in combat, while The Regiment (1955) is about the unit he fought with, the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment.

He was published by McClelland & Stewart, which specialized in promoting Canadian authors, especially during the high point of Canadian cultural nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s. The typeface on this first edition cover is Graphis Extra Bold, by Les Usherwood (1932–1983) of Typsettra in Toronto. Graphis was later extended as Barnyard. The jacket illustration is by Alan Daniel and depicts Ortona.

The title is taken from the poem La Belle Dame sans Merci (1818) by John Keats.

The imprint uses Times New Roman with some Pilgrim.

Kirby Cracker is a caps-only variation of Helvetica Bold with closed counters and added stars. According to Modern Publicity 1973, it was created under Alan Fletcher’s direction at Pentagram, apparently as a custom typeface for a client named Missen. London-based photosetting service Conways carried this face under the name Telstar by January 1974.

The same year, it was chosen for the cover of an album with progressive jazz and funk by East German by band leader Klaus Lenz (b. 1940), featuring singers Uschi Brüning and Klaus Nowodworski. The names are added in Herold. The album was released on the Polish Muza label, with liner notes by Werner Sellhorn. Three years later, Klaus Lenz left the GDR and moved to West Germany.

[More info on Discogs]

From Wikipedia:

The Terminal Man is a 1974 American horror science fiction film directed by Mike Hodges, based on the 1972 novel of the same name by Michael Crichton. Starring George Segal and Joan Hackett, the film centers on the danger of mind control and the power of computers.

The movie title uses Hiroshi Yamashita’s Alpha Midnight with select bits colored in red. The credits are added in caps from an unidentified (custom?) typeface with similarities to ABC Sans and Zarana.

Fonts from the Flea Market #1459

Cruz Swinger Shaded in two-color use for a 1978 single by Argentine singer-songwriter Mario Rubén González Pierotti, better known as Jairo. The French song titles are added in caps from ITC Souvenir.

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Loose New Roman in use for John Lisco’s jacket design for Nelson Doubleday’s 1977 book club edition of Llana of Gathol and John Carter of Mars, with wraparound art by Richard Corben. The omnibus edition merges the last two books in the Barsoom series by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950).

[More info on ISFDB]

From Wikipedia:

The Deceivers is a 1988 adventure film directed by Nicholas Meyer, starring Pierce Brosnan, Shashi Kapoor and Saeed Jaffrey. The film is based on the 1952 John Masters novel of the same name regarding the murderous Thuggee of India.

Maurice Binder – best known for creating the gun-barrel sequence of the first Bond film, Dr. No – designed the opening titles. For the typography, he used Loose New Roman. I’ve always understood the first part of its name to refer to the typeface’s casualness, using an adjective that better works for mimicking “Times New Roman” than “Casual New Roman” would do. Binder gave it a second meaning by opening up the spacing. 

The historical drama is set in India. Binder hinted at this fact by adding a horizontal bar above the second word in the title, referencing the head line or śirorekhā that’s so characteristic for the Indic Devanagari script. It’s a quick and easy way to communicate “India” to a Western audience … but maybe it’s a little too easy, and not culturally sensitive. This question aside, the execution isn’t convincing on a formal level: the bar looks slapped on and doesn’t blend in with the ductus of Loose New Roman. Furthermore, the Latin lowercase letters aren’t connected to the head line. This way, the treatment has more in common with the Ferrari wordmark than with actual Indic writing.

In March 1996 TassinariVetta took over the art direction of Casabella, the historic architectural review founded in 1928. From that moment on the magazine has become part of the everyday life of the studio, where it is designed month after month.

Aiming to go beyond the traditional concept of ‘typographic architecture’ – which sees graphic arts subject to the universal compositional rules expressed in architecture – and to offer a new perspective on the world of letters, the 2024-25 cover design sets editorial objectives ahead of graphic ones.

Taking advantage of the constraints inherent in monthly publication in sectoralization and serialization, and enhancing repetitive elements—the masthead, headlines, but above all the sequential number—the project brings editorial content to the cover through the choice of the font used to compose the number, its graphic interpretation, and the explanatory note published on the inside pages, which is an integral part of the project itself.

Faithful to the magazine tradition, issue after issue, the choice of lettering or typeface moves through the 20th century between avant-garde and modernism, with forays into adjacent spaces suggested by unlikely discards or ambiguous analogies, while exploring the development of the industrial means underlying mechanical writing.

With philological respect—using fonts available under license, photographic reproductions of original specimens, or vector redrawing, as appropriate—and with the calibrated use of a color palette consistent with the magazine visual history, the graphic interpretation ultimately aims to bring the historical artifact into the present, contextualizing it in a contemporary and accessible language.

no. 976 – Lettering for the Tomba Veritti (Udine, Italy), Carlo Scarpa, 1951

no. 975 – Univers, Adrian Frutiger, Deberny & Peignot, 1957

no. 974 – Prisma, Rudolf Koch, Klingspor, 1930

no. 973 – LL Le Corbusier, Nico Schweizer (da Le Corbusier), Lineto, 1999

no. 971-972 – Memphis, Rudolf Wolf, Stempel AG, 1929

no. 970 – Ingenieur, Wim Crouwel, 1964, The Foundry Types, 2012

no. 969 – bayer-type, Hebert Bayer, Berthold, 1931

no. 968 – Mexico 68, Lance Wyman, 1966–68

no. 967 – Our Bodoni, Massimo Vignelli, Tom Carnase, WTC (World Typeface Center), 1989

no. 965-966 – Futura Black / Paul Renner / Bauer, 1929

no. 963 – Fat Face, Herb Lubalin, Tom Carnase, ITC International Typeface Corporation, 1970

no. 962 – Kabel, Rudolf Koch, Klingspor, 1927

no. 961 – Stop, Aldo Novarese, Nebiolo, 1970

no 959-960 – New Alphabet, Wim Crouwel, 1967

no. 958 – Frankfurter, Bob Newman, Letraset, 1970

no. 957 – Universal, Herbert Bayer, 1925

no. 956 – Oakland, Zuzana Licko, Emigre, 1985

no. 955 – Aldina (Aldino), Nebiolo, redesign Adalberto Libera, 1938

no. 954 – Kombinationsschrift, Josef Albers, 1926–28

no. 953 – Bifur, A.M. Cassandre, Deberny & Peignot, 1929

Byte magazine, issue #4, December 1975

Bill Godbout was something of a pioneer in the early microcomputer movement of the 1970s, and his firm Bill Godbout Electronics was a commercial vehicle selling discount and surplus electronics and microcomputer components. Bill Godbout Electronics was a regular advertiser in the early issues of the seminal BYTE magazine. Issue #4 is the first Christmas issue and features a 2-pager from Bill Godbout Electronics that mixes a large number of fonts in a style typical of both this era and this advertiser.

“Bill Godbout Electronics” is in Wexford. I think the “CAVE grafix” is lettering, but the first word may be based on Koloss (see further below). “Wish you a joyous holiday season” and so in is in Davida. “If you are into toyful tinkering” and so on is in outlined Cooper Black.

“Son-of-a Cheap Clock” is in Tonight, and above it “We have a successor to our very popular ‘Cheap Clock Kit’!” is in Script (for the IBM Selectric; see also the body fonts, glossed below). The price, $14.50, is in Umbra. Both Script and Umbra are used on the following page.

Windsor is used for “they also make great gifts” (on the curve) and the following text. “Electronic Projects for Musicians” is Reklameschrift Herold. Below the decorative band, “EROM board special offer” is in Helvetica, outlined and with a South shadow.

“4K x 8 pre-programmed for 8080” is in an outline style of a somewhat Microgramma-like font that I couldn’t identify that is also used on the second page.

On the second page, “Bigger & Better” is in Skin & Bones (using two alternates for G, but not for E). “Pace 16 bit chip set” is in Koloss. “1 Pace 16 bit CPU” and other text on and under the curve is the previously mentioned and unidentified outline Microgramma-lookalike.

“Pace Data Packet” is Advertisers Gothic (using the A without a top flag). “4K x 8 RAM kit” is in Umbra. “EROM board kit” is in Rock Opera. The “8K x 8” and so on again is in Wexford. “There’s more ... We have” is in Monogram.

The body text (and some secondary and subtitle text) is typewritten in a variety of fonts, and I did a much better job of identifying those, all available on the IBM Selectric:

On the first page the text for the clock, starting “BIGGER DIGITS” is in Artisan. “By Craig Anderton” (the author of “Electronic Projects for Musicians”) is in Orator (probably, in any case Orator is used on the next page).

The text for the Craig Anderton blurb is Adjutant, I think. Delegate and Adjutant are very similar with only slight differences in weight and thick/thin contrast, but they have different pitches: Adjutant is 12 characters per inch, and is tighter than Delegate at 10. The text block at the bottom of the first page, starting “By special arrangement”, is in Bookface Academic.

On the second page, below “Pace 16 bit”, the text starting “This chip set gets you into PACE” is in Manifold. The word “PACE” itself is in another font (the Selectric had a feature where you could switch type-balls and still retain the cursor position), possibly Pica. Manifold is again used for the bottom paragraph starting “READOUTS, LEDS, TRANSISTORS”. Below “Pace Data Packet”, “Since we started advertising” is Orator. Below “4K x 8 RAM”, “Note the lower price” looks like Prestige Elite.

Below “EROM BOARD”, the text starting “Now you can stuff up to 8K” initially had me stumped, but I think I have tracked it down. The small caps in place of little letters, made me think of Orator, which it isn’t; the o is distinctly squaroid and reminded me of the output of the IBM lineprinters, such as the 1403. It turns out that the IBM Selectric has a typeball called AN3/360 which the 1972 brochure specifically says matches the AN3 style available on IBM’s lineprinters.

At the bottom of the second page, to the right of the wordmark, the payment and terms text starting “YOU MAY PLACE MASTERCHARGE® OR BANKAMERICARD® ORDERS” is in Script.

1983 album by Sly & Robbie and the Taxi Gang, released on their own Taxi Records.

The open letterforms casting a perspective shadow are from Alpha Sunrise, the dimensional style of Hiroshi Yamashita’s typeface family. “Taxi Gang” is in Letraset’s Revue. “Taxi Connection” appears to be Advertisers Gothic – also available from Letraset – with a custom C made from an O. The names of the Taxi Gang members on the side of the car are set in Franklin Gothic Extra Condensed.

In memory of Robbie (1953–2021) and Sly (1952–2026).

[More info on Discogs]

From Wikipedia:

3000 Years of Fantasy and Science Fiction is an anthology of fantasy and science fiction short stories, edited by American writers L. Sprague de Camp and Catherine Crook de Camp. […] The book collects eleven tales by various authors, with a foreword by Isaac Asimov and an overall introduction by the de Camps.

The first-edition jacket by Lothrop, Lee & Shepard features works by two outstanding artists who have left us in recent years.

The illustration is by Emanuel “Manny” Schongut. Born in New York in 1936, Schongut studied at Pratt Institute, majoring in graphic arts and illustration. In the 1960s and 1970s, he worked as a freelance illustrator in New York City, designing book covers for publishers like Harper & Row, Doubleday, and Random House. You can learn more about him and his works in an interview conducted by Joachim Boaz in 2016. Emanuel Schongut died in December 2022.

The typeface is Fat Albert. The squarish sans – here seen in its Shadow style – is an early design by Ray Cruz. Born in 1943 in Puerto Rico, Cruz graduated from New York City’s High School of Art and Design and embarked on a long and fruitful career as lettering artist and type designer. Fat Albert was made around 1970 while working at John N. Schaedler. Like Schongut, he designed numerous book covers for publishing houses in New York, such as Knopf, Simon & Schuster, Schocken, and Delacorte Press. In 2004, he himself digitized all three styles of his Fat Albert for a re-release with Bitstream. Ray Cruz passed away in March 2025.

[More info on ISFDB]

Viking Press, 1976

Just like Butley, Otherwise Engaged is a play by English playwright Simon Gray. It premiered at the Queen’s Theatre in London on 10 July 1975, again with Alan Bates as the star and Harold Pinter as director.

When Viking Press brought out a book edition in 1976, Roy Kuhlman was once more commissioned with the jacket design. As with Butley, he worked with a posterized photo (by Donald Cooper) printed in flat colors. This time, he went with John N. Schaedler’s Super Cooper as the typeface. Kuhlman’s design was reused with different colors and rearranged typography for Penguin’s paperback edition, see below.

Penguin Books, 1977

This Use brings together two fine people who we’ve lost in 2025: Robert Redford died today at the age of 89. The typeface used for James Spada’s book is the solid style of Fat Albert. It was designed by Ray Cruz who passed away on March 26. First published by Citadel Press in 1977, this is the cover of the updated edition from 1984, designed by Angela Arnet.

The Scientist (born Hopeton Overton Brown) is one of the most influential figures in dub music, with over 60,000 recordings to his name. His contributions to the genre have spanned from Studio One to King Tubby’s, Channel One to Tuff Gong, and he pioneered recording techniques that elevated the dub mix to an art form.

Due to the Scientists’ distinctive process of creating dub records, we meticulously crafted the layout to encapsulate the essence of the direct-to-dub process.

Direct-To-Dub was released on Night Dreamer Records.

[More info on Discogs]

Soul Street is an album by R&B and soul singer and songwriter Eddie Floyd (b. 1937), released in 1974 on Stax Records. The sleeve design is by the record company’s internal design studio, The Stax Organization. Ellis H. Chappell provided the marvelous street scene illustration, complete with shop signs of current and previous businesses in various lettering styles as well as details such as protest graffiti.

[More info on Discogs]

The cover typography is set in Swinger. This funky heavyweight comes in two styles, Swinger and Swinger Shadow, both of which can be seen here. The designer of Swinger is Ray Cruz.

Born August 31, 1943, in Ponce, Puerto Rico, Cruz graduated from New York City’s High School of Art and Design and honed his skills working in several of the city’s lettering studios, including Techni-Process (1963), Headliners (1964, under John N. Schaedler), and, following two years of army service, at the newly formed John N. Schaedler, Inc. There, he helped Schaedler design Loose New Roman and was soon appointed studio director. Tempor Medium and Bold from 1968 were “his first independently designed alphabet styles”. Swinger and Fat Albert followed in 1969 and 1970. Cruz described the latter as the “sign of the times – anti-war fervor mixed with sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll”.

In 1977, he founded Cruz & Slowik Associates, together with Janet Slowik. There, he drew numerous wordmarks and logotypes, as well as custom typefaces including for Camel and the United States Postal Service. From 1999 to 2005, Cruz served as type director at the Young & Rubicam advertising agency. In addition, he was a passionate teacher, working as adjunct professor at Parsons School of Design, FIT, Kean University’s Robert Busch School of Design, County College of Morris, and Marywood College.

In total, Cruz designed more than fifty typeface styles. He revived some of his early works himself and released them in digital form through his own foundry, Cruz Fonts, including Swinger.

Ramon “Ray” Cruz died on March 26, 2025, at the age of 81. Rest in peace.

Credits and track list on the back cover are set in a light weight of ITC Avant Garde Gothic.

Re’Generation was a soul/gospel touring ensemble of a cappella singers founded and led by Derric Johnson, and active from 1970 to 1983. This album from 1972 comes with a cover designed by Bob McConnell, featuring photography by Bill Grein and a bichromatic use of Swinger Shadow, designed by Ray Cruz for Schaedler. The track names in Optima Bold are arranged around the top of the bell that encloses the photograph.

[More info on Discogs]

Album cover for the debut album by free jazz violinist Michael White, designed by frequent Impulse! records designer Philip Melnick using the regular and shadow styles of Fat Albert.

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Fat Albert was designed by Ray Cruz for Schaedler, a smaller phototype studio in New York City. In 1975, it was used in red and yellow caps for an album by jazz organist Richard “Groove” Holmes (1931–1991). It includes material arranged and conducted by Oliver Nelson, including the theme from the 1970s science fiction and action adventure TV series The Six Million Dollar Man.

[More info on Discogs]

Fat Albert by Ray Cruz, used in all caps for the first paperback edition of The Power of Blackness, published as a Berkley Medallion book in November 1976. Portions of Jack Williamson’s novel first appeared in Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine, Galaxy Science Fiction, and Amazing Science Fiction, before it was published in hardback by Berkley/Putnam in January 1976.

[More info on ISFDB]

Title page (detail)

Back cover

These posters were designed by Zdeněk Vlach for a 1989 Czechoslovak release of the 1976 King Kong film directed by John Guillermin. The title type is Reklameschrift Herold, which we’ve seen in use for creepy purposes before, in Hellbore magazine.

Vlach (1942–1999) studied at the Art School in Prague, but didn’t graduate. He nevertheless embarked on a career as graphic artist, illustrator, and film and set designer. Between 1970 and 1989, he created 203 movie posters. [ART+]

The small print on this DIN A4 mini poster combines the bold weight of Universal Grotesk for John Guillermin’s name with Super-Grotesk.

The cover features Romanisch (two weights) and Eckmann. The latter is used with the long s (ſ in “Nebst”), the former isn’t (in “seine”).

This guide to Trier and the surrounding area was issued in 1905 by Heinrich Stephanus. The local publisher and book seller was established in 1878 and still is in business today. The cover and the title page bring together a number of typefaces that were typical for the place and time. The building shown at the top right is the Porta Nigra, a city gate from Roman times.