A poem written by Charles Knowles Bolton about a historical figure in Connecticut. The decorations are by Ethel Reed, but the printer or book designer is uncredited. The publisher, Lamson, Wolffe, and Company, wrote the following in their 1896 catalog:

It is printed in a a dark brown ink, in an old style antique type, on heavy, hand-made paper of natural tint, with deckled edges and uncut leaves. The book is appropriately illustrated by Miss Ethel Reed, who has drawn also the title-page and cover designs. […]

“Much of the attraction of Mr. Bolton’s little volume lies in the admirable illustrations and letter-heads by Miss Ethel Reed. These designs are in the ‘poster’ style, and in their cleverly massed effects and bold outline have considerable charm and originality.” — The Literary World.

The design is typical of the Arts & Crafts movement, favoring bold strokes in both artwork and type. Old Style Antique is the US import of Miller & Richard’s Old Style Antique No. 7, a 1850s–60s design that regained popularity in the early 1900s. It was later revised as Bookman.

The main title type is a mystery. It seems to match Boston’s Old Style Antique No. 2, but that W!

Source: archive.org License: All Rights Reserved.

McNeil Bros. was a San Jose printer specializing in labels. Their 1885 catalog, Specimens of Druggist Labels…, is an explosion of eccentric type and ornament in fancy frames, offering hundreds of examples of artistic printing from the real world. This label combines seven very different display faces. The shaded ornaments pair well with the title type, Italic Copperplate, a design so elaborate it could be mistaken for custom engraving.

Source: archive.org License: All Rights Reserved.

Italic Copperplate shown in MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan’s 1891 catalog.

Most of the type in the McNeil Bros. shop was likely procured from the largest local foundry, Palmer & Rey in San Francisco. The company didn’t originate many (if any) type designs of their own, but they did supply the West Coast with novelties from Cincinnati, New York’s Conner, and Philadelphia’s MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan, all of which are represented on this label.

Source: archive.org License: Public Domain.

Pen Text, as shown in Palmer & Rey’s 1884 catalog (printed the year before the McNeil Bros. book that features the above label). In this copy of the specimen book held at the University of California, someone tried sketching a few characters in the ronde script style.

This picture of a typographic freight car is reproduced from an article that appeared in the June 1896 issue of the Inland Printer. It reads:

A Large Shipment of Type
The accompanying illustration was made from a photograph of the first carload of type ever shipped from St. Louis. The shipment was made by the American Type Founders’ Company to their Texas agents, the Scarff & O’Connor Company, of Dallas. The car contained over 30,000 pounds of type, and was turned out with other orders between February 6 and the date shipment was made—March 25. This is pretty good evidence that there is some material being used in the Southwest, and also that St. Louis is well able to supply the demand.

The wagon was used as a self-referential billboard on wheels, with a sign on the side that advertised its contents – out-of-home advertising in the 1890s. The text is rendered in a wide roman with considerable contrast. It’s way too large to be itself typeset and printed, of course. This was a job for a sign painter. Still, I’d like to think that the letterforms were loosely based on a typeface, making this an example of fonts in indirect use.

The typeface that served as the model is De Vinne Extended. At least that’s what the C with the distinctive underbite suggests. In addition to weight and proportion, other shared characteristics include the big-headed R with diagonal leg, the E and F with thin long arms, the u with angled top terminals, and the r with ball terminal. Granted, the S is not really a match – but then again, it just as hard to faithfully copy an S as it is to draw a good one. One more reason that speaks in favor of De Vinne Extended is that this style was a brand-new product at the time, having been introduced the same year.

Carload of type for
TEXAS PRINTERS
Bought by
SCARFF & O’CONNOR CO.,
Dallas, TEXAS
of the
American Type Founders’ Co.,
Via Frisco St. Louis, Mo.

Composite image with specimens for De Vinne Extended from ATF’s Desk Book of Type Specimens from 1900

The Berkeley Tribe is possibly the most famous “New Left” newspaper. Centered in Berkeley, California, it (like other publications) focused on revolutionary subject matter (Black/Women's Liberation, Gay rights, Antiwar Movements, etc.). Their headquarters were at multiple times bombed or shot, with the FBI surveilling their operation.

The masthead, like with many famous magazines, such as TIME, is a custom lettering.

Crediting designers for each issue can be tricky, as intimidation from attacks and police prompted staff to remove their names from the masthead. However, East Bay Media is noted to have served the tribe's publishing and at least some graphic design from 1971, the time of this issue here (it is possible other Berkeley area shops filled a similar role during the paper's run, too).

Early covers and hand lettering are credited to designer Gary Grimshaw, who possibly did not work on this particular specimen.

Shown here are the cover and a selection of eleven of the twenty-four pages, featuring most of the display fonts used in the editorial design at least once. Text is set in Univers and Century Schoolbook.

Headlines in Dom Casual (“The Unknown Defendant”) and Clarendon (“Justice We Don’t Expect From You”)

Publicity Gothic (“No Future Rev No Family”) and Clarendon

“Weather Sister Ripped Off At Flicks” is in Roberta.

Headlines in Antikva Margaret (“U.S. Bombs”) and Windsor Elongated (“Thoughts On Being Human”)

Grotesque No. 9 for “SIERRA” and “feedback”

Franklin Gothic for the “Pusherman” headline, De Vinne for “Human Culture Time-Line”

Cooper Black and Haas Inserat Grotesk for “War-Season’s Greetings from JAPAN” . The ad below features two weights of Blippo (equivalent to Burko and Harry) and City.

Profil for “OKINAWA”. The ad for Midnight Films uses Mistral.

More Inserat-Grotesk for “The Sacred Tree is Dead”. Times New Roman is used for the poem at the bottom right.

The “KILL ’EM” headline is set in Windsor. Smoke and Futura feature for the Free Store ad and Helvetica for the one by Sound City.

The “Masturbation” headline is in Jay Gothic. Fonts used in the ads include Flash (“Native Son”) and Commercial Script (“MANDRAKE’S).

First edition (hardcover) by Bartholomew House, 1967, illustrated by Bill Wenzell. The illustrations on the front of jacket are by Roy E. LaGrone. Secondary typefaces include Craw Clarendon Condensed, Filmotype Harmony (or Photo-Lettering’s copy, Almadine Script), and Century Expanded Italic.

Coffee Tea or Me? was advertised as “the uninhibited memoirs of two airline stewardesses”, and credited to Trudy Baker and Rachel Jones. In fact, it was ghost-written by Donald Bain. The 1967 hardcover dust jacket features Caruso Roxy, set in all caps. The same typeface was also used for the paperback cover, now bigger and in mixed case, as well as for the three sequels published until 1975. In 1973, the book was made into a film.

Caruso Roxy is a typeface that we’ve come to associate with the swinging 60s.

Coffee Tea or Me? The uninhibited memoirs of two airline stewardesses. First Bantam edition (paperback), November 1968 with cover art by Bill Wenzel and small text in all-caps News Gothic.

The Coffee Tea or Me Girls’ ’Round the World Diary. First edition (hardcover) by Grosset & Dunlap, 1970. The multilingual toasts are stereotypically added in more or less fitting typefaces: Peignot (French), Post-Antiqua (Hebrew), Cloister Black (German), Centaur (Spanish), Akzidenz-Grotesk Extended (Scandinavian), Jessen-Schrift (Greek), Americana (English), Mandarin (Japanese), and Century Schoolbook (Italian).

Jacket and cover with spine lettering

The Coffee Tea or Me Girls’ ’Round the World Diary. Paperback edition by Bantam Books, April 1971, with small type in Alternate Gothic.

The Coffee Tea Or Me Girls: Lay it On The Line, Bantam Books, 1973. The fat years are over: the main typeface now is Caruso Roxy’s light weight. Secondary text is in italic caps from Caledonia.

The Coffee Tea Or Me Girls Get Away From It All, Bantam Books, 1975, with Helvetica used for the text in red.

The first page of a large 480-page catalog advertising goods offered by Feldheim, Gotthelf & Co., an Australian importer of “British, Continental and American Merchandise”. Founded in the 1850s, the company entered a period of growth starting with a new warehouse in 1892. This catalog, published around 1905, offers an extensive window into essentially the entire breadth of goods available to Australian households at the time. The company entered a period of decline a few years later due to partners retiring from business, and in 1924 began the process of shutting down the company which concluded in 1927.

The catalog is set in a smorgasbord of period typefaces. The shown page features Facade for the company’s name, followed by Maltese Shaded, Condensed Sans Serifs Italic (see Condensed & Elongated Sans Serifs), Grotesque No. 4A, and Reed’s Runic Extended (for “Sydney”). “On Sale” is in DeVinne Ornamental and the list of items in De Vinne. The caps used for the name and location shown integrated in the red border are from Concave. Some of the typefaces used for smaller text are yet unidentified.

Vom Fels zum Meer (“From rock to sea”) is an “illustrated journal for the German house” edited by Wilhelm Spemann (1844–1910) and published from 1881 to 1917. Between 1890 and 1897, Spemann’s publishing house was merged into Union Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, a company he had founded together with Adolf Kröner (1836–1911).

The shown letter was sent in January 1894 to one of the family journal’s advertisers, the “Duc” Cycle Co. in Herzogenbusch, that is ’s-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands. “Duc” was a brand by B.A. Jansen who imported bicycles manufactured by the Quinton Cycle Co. in Coventry, England. Pasted in the bottom left corner is a sample of the ad that was to be included in Vom Fels zum Meer.

The text block at the top right features five different blackletter typefaces. The title is set in Renaissance-Fraktur, with the subtitle added in a version of Original-Gotisch. “Monats-Ausgabe” uses a German adaptation of Tudor Black, possibly Psalter-Gotisch by Krebs. Last but not least, we get to see Flinsch’s Halbfette Schwabacher and Albert Anklam’s Neue Schwabacher.

Detail

A ticket for a fundraising benefit held at the Grace Lutheran Church in Lancaster, Pa. The printer was David Bachman Landis of Pluck Art Printery (also called Pluck Print and later known as Landis Art Print).

Entertainment
By the Young Women’s Missionary Society, At Grace Lutheran Church, Tuesday, May 15, 1894.
Benefit of Emmanuel Mission. Admission, 10 Cents.
Pluck Print

William H. Moyer, of Pottsville, Pa., received a V.S. (Veterinary Surgeon) degree from the Ontario Veterinary College in Toronto during the commencement held on March 28, 1891, according to a note in the Journal of Comparative Medicine and Veterinary Archives, vol. 12, no. 5, May 1891, pp. 261-64.

Afterwards, he set up a practice in Elizabethville, Pa., as indicated on this business card. Someone penciled in the year “1890” on the front of the card, and the name “J. Romberger” is written on the back.

Dr. W. H. Moyer,
Veterinary Surgeon and Dentist, Elizabethville, Pa.
Graduate of the Ontario Veterinary College, Member of the Veterinary Medical Society, of Toronto, Canada.
Four Year’s Practice with Dr. J. W. Sallade, V.S., of Pottsville, Pa.

The doctor’s name is set in John F. Cumming’s Karnac (Dickinson, 1884). The condensed low-contrast slab for his job description is unidentified – it’s similar to Skeleton. “Elizabethville, Pa.” is in a Gothic, possibly Boston’s. Additional typefaces include (an American version or relative?) of Antique Five, Latin Antique, a light Clarendon/Ionic, and what looks like Antique No. 310, Bruce’s version of Old Style Antique No. 7.

Source: chroniclingamerica.loc.gov US Library of Congress: “Chronicling America”. License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: chroniclingamerica.loc.gov US Library of Congress: “Chronicling America”. License: All Rights Reserved.

This ad in The Salt Lake Herald., April 18, 1880, demonstrates the ingenuity of late nineteenth-century typographers. Given the cost of producing and printing engravings, newspaper ads rarely used illustrations at that time. So companies sometimes turned to type to draw attention and express themselves. This layout evokes rug patterns and borders as if seen from overhead in a floor plan, grabbing the eye on an otherwise dense page.

The designer put three very different typeface styles to use: The “Carpets.” at top and bottom appear to match MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan’s four-line pica Gothic, No. 3, a style we list as Grotesque No. 5 / 396–399. (The word at the top may use a C from a different font.) Meanwhile, the light and narrow Condensed No. 3 contrasts nicely with the extra broad and bold Title Extended. All of these typefaces were likely created within a couple decades before this printing. They originated at German or Eastern U.S. foundries and made their way across the country to Salt Lake City in time to show up in service of the Walker Brothers Carpet company.

Source: fontsinuse.com Nick Sherman. License: All Rights Reserved.

Black Sabbath’s first four studio albums – Black Sabbath, Paranoid, Master of Reality, and Vol 4, released in rapid succession between 1970 and 1972 – laid much of the groundwork for the heavy metal movement. While there were other bands playing heavy blues-inspired hard rock at the time, the gloomy, doom-laden stylings of Black Sabbath helped fuel their early success as one of the first – and most influential – heavy metal acts ever.

Sabbath’s dark aesthetic was established from the start with help from the visuals on their records. Their first four albums were released through the Vertigo record label in London and, as such, involved Vertigo’s in-house designer at the time, Keith Stuart Macmillan. Macmillan studied photography at Royal College of Art but has worked in various roles related to the visual side of music – from design to directing music videos. Early in his career he worked under the moniker Marcus Keef (or simply “Keef”) to avoid confusion with photographer Keith Lionel McMillan who likewise worked with rock musicians at the time.

In addition to his stylized photography, Keef also contributed design work to those first four albums, which – along with designs from the Bloomsbury Group – include now-iconic titling graphics. At least for the first two releases, he entrusted a fellow student from the Royal College of Art with the typography: it was Sandy Field who designed the titling for Black Sabbath and Paranoid.

Despite the ubiquity of those albums and the many design imitations they’ve inspired, the sources of their letterforms have been largely undocumented and obscured by the passage of time. Some of the albums’ titling has often, mistakenly, been assumed to be totally hand-lettered. Even when a typeface was suspected as a starting point, exact sources have proven elusive.

This situation is not surprising when you consider those first four Sabbath covers were all designed using uncommon sources from the era of phototype and dry transfer lettering – a relatively short period after the peak of letterpress printing but before the digital revolution. Type styles from larger companies of that era, like Photo-Lettering and Letraset, have been documented fairly well in subsequent years. But there were also smaller companies and publications at the time whose designs are still much less known today, partly because the original reference materials are so scarce.

All four of the first Black Sabbath records got their titling styles from exactly those kinds of niche sources.

Black Sabbath (1970)

Source: fontsinuse.com Neil Priddey. License: All Rights Reserved.

Though it is multiple generations removed, the titling style of the first, self-titled Black Sabbath album has its origins in an ornamented typeface from the Central Type Foundry called Harper, first released in 1882. The curly design was part of a wave of type styles from that era that tried to evoke a sense of exoticism through unusual forms.

Source: archive.org Internet Archive. License: All Rights Reserved.

1892 Central Type Foundry specimen of Harper.

Source: archive.org Internet Archive. License: All Rights Reserved.

1889 Franklin Type Foundry specimen of Harper.

Source: fontsinuse.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Harper Rimmed Initials as shown in the 1897 catalog of Day & Collins, a wood type manufacturer in Fann Street, London.

Harper included a set of outlined or “rimmed” initials which seem to have outlived the core design through adaptation by various other publishers over the years, for various other formats. One such adaptation was for fonts of wood type by the British company Day & Collins, who sold it as Harper Rimmed Initials. This adaptation, in turn, inspired many subsequent interpretations, especially during the era of phototype and dry transfer lettering.

One particular take on that design wasn’t even a proper typeface in the traditional sense, but instead was published as a standalone alphabet in the Twelve Unusual Alphabets Compiled by Crosby/Fletcher/Forbes portfolio (1970). This adaptation of Harper Rimmed Initials appears to be the one used by Field to compose the titling for the cover of Black Sabbath.

Source: www.flickr.com Stephen Coles. License: All Rights Reserved.

Sheet 9 from Twelve Unusual Alphabets Compiled by Crosby/Fletcher/Forbes. London: Mears, Caldwell, Hacker, not dated [1970]. This source was originally identified by Patrick Concannon.

Florian Hardwig. License: All Rights Reserved.

A lineage of adaptations of Harper Rimmed, from top to bottom:

1970 Black Sabbath cover detail feat. the Unusual Alphabet #9 by Crosby/Fletcher/Forbes, c.1970.

Harper with rimmed initials by Gustav F. Schroeder for Central Type Foundry, 1882.

Eminence by Photo-Lettering, Inc., 1962.

Manuscript Capitals by Bob Newman for Letraset, 1972.

Fancy Letter by Walter Haettenschweiler. Allegedly from 1957. However, the earliest known showing is in the 5th revised edition of Lettera 2 from 1976.

Abbey Scroll, shown by Formatt in 1974.

Daisy Rimmed, shown by Solotype in 1992.

Coincidentally, the Harper Rimmed Initials seem to have also influenced the design of the logo for Orange amplifiers around the same time. Black Sabbath weren’t regular Orange users but they were famously seen playing them for their 1970 performances on the West German Beat-Club television show.

Source: www.preservationsound.com Preservation Sound. License: All Rights Reserved.

The Orange amplifier logo as seen on an item in their circa 1970 catalog, seemingly based on some adaptation of the Harper typeface.

Source: www.youtube.com Beat-Club. License: All Rights Reserved.

Tony Iommi playing guitar through an Orange amplifier, from the famous Beat-Club performance in 1970.

Paranoid (1971)

Source: fontsinuse.com Heritage Auctions. License: All Rights Reserved.

Following the success of their debut, the pressure was on for Black Sabbath to quickly release a follow-up album. Keef again handled the photography and design. The photography for the cover was prepared with the idea that the album would be titled War Pigs (after the song), however the title was changed to Paranoid at the last minute and the short turnaround meant there was no time to prepare new photography, resulting in an unintended mismatch of imagery and text. Despite this mix-up, the album was a hit, furthering Sabbath’s heavy metal influence.

As with the first album, Field’s title design for Paranoid made use of a fairly recent, somewhat obscure adaptation of an earlier letter style. This time, though, instead of using an alphabet from a book based on a typeface, it was a typeface based on an alphabet from a book.

Scanned by Florian Hardwig. License: CC BY-NC-SA.

Book jacket for Lettera 2 (left), “a standard book of fine lettering” edited by Armin Haab and Walter Haettenschweiler and published by Niggli in 1961. One of the included alphabets is Lettre coupé. The showing on page 53 (right) is caps only and omits the letter L.

In 1961, the Lettera 2 book was released as the second entry in the Lettera series of alphabet sourcebooks, published by Arthur Niggli Ltd. The book, edited by Armin Haab and Walter Haettenschweiler, included a collection of various alphabet designs – some taken directly from typefaces, others from original lettering samples. One of the samples was an original alphabet, titled Lettre Coupé, designed by Haettenschweiler with a hand-cut appearance.

Some designers adapted the alphabet for album artwork, sometimes modifying glyphs, altering the proportions, and/or improvising characters that weren’t included in the original sample.

By 1969, the alphabet had been adapted into a proper typeface by the Lettergraphics phototype company, offered under the name Black Casual. The typeface added new counterforms to A, B, and P, as well as a few new characters (L, comma, ?, and &). Black Casual appears to be what Field used to compose the titling for Paranoid. Given the Black name, the use might be considered a partial LTypI.

Scanned by Florian Hardwig. License: CC BY-NC-SA.

Californian phototype provider Lettergraphics turned Haettenschweiler’s lettering into a proper typeface. Their adaptation called Black Casual can here be seen in a catalog dated 1969. It adds the missing L alongside some punctuation glyphs (comma, question mark, ampersand) and also introduces counters in A B and P.

Perhaps inspired by the dark vibes of Paranoid, Lettre Coupé was adapted in 1973 for the title sequence of blaxploitation horror film Scream Blacula Scream.

Source: www.artofthetitle.com Art of the Title. License: All Rights Reserved.

Title frame from the opening sequence of Scream Blacula Scream (1973).

Master of Reality (1971)

Source: fontsinuse.com Scanned by Nick Sherman. License: All Rights Reserved.

The cover of Sabbath’s third album dropped photography entirely and went all-in on a text-only treatment, with large, bold, in-your-face, typography – twisted and warped as if being shaken by high-amplitude vibrations, or distorted by altered perception. While the photography of the first two Sabbath records gave them a dark, otherworldly feeling, the Master of Reality cover also puts an emphasis on HEAVINESS.

The darkness wasn’t abandoned though. Below the purple band name, the album’s title for the first pressings was only distinguished from the black background via embossing, resulting in raised letterforms that are equally as tactile as they are visual. If the question is “How much more black could this be?”, the answer is: “None. None more black.”

Eventually the record companies releasing new editions of the album decided that “none more black” was too black and/or embossing was too expensive, so the cover has seen many variants over the years with the title alternately colored gray, white, orange, green, pink, black with white outline, and more. Some releases have also colored the band’s name in alternating rainbow colors.

Source: www.discogs.com Discogs. License: CC BY-NC-SA.

A sampling of the various colorways that have been used for Master of Reality over the years.

Despite the text-only cover, Keef’s stylized photography still made an appearance on a poster included as an insert with the original release. The design for the album is credited to Bloomsbury Group, a British firm active in the 1970s (apparently named after the early-1900s intellectual collective of the same name), with art direction by Mike Stanford.

The typeface on the cover is, yet again, an obscure phototype interpretation of an existing design. In this case, the ancestral type is Rudolf Koch’s Kabel which originated in the late 1920s. The reimagined adaptation used for Master of Reality is Lodwick Kabel, which pushes the weight of Kabel beyond any of its previous incarnations, and even heavier than ITC or Letraset would later take their interpretations in 1975 and 1980, respectively.

Nick Sherman. License: CC BY-NC-SA.

A comparison of the heaviest interpretations of Kabel as offered variously in phototype, dry transfer lettering, and digital type. Samples scaled to approximately matching cap heights.

Lodwick Kabel was available by 1970 from the Photoscript phototype company, and presented as an “Exclusive Royalty face”. The name suggests a possible connection to Hardy/Lodwick (a.k.a. Hardy/Escasany/Lodwick), a studio that was active in London in the 1970s – but that connection is unconfirmed.

Scanned by Florian Hardwig. License: CC BY-NC-SA.

London-based typesetting company Photoscript showed Lodwick Kabel in their List of Typefaces 1970, as “Exclusive Royalty face” and in two widths.

Scanned by Florian Hardwig. License: All Rights Reserved.

Lodwick Kabel as shown in a 1990 specimen book from the TypoBach typesetting company.

Since its release, the Master of Reality cover has been imitated many times, perhaps most prominently by British rock group Arctic Monkeys. Even Black Sabbath themselves have rehashed the warped sans-serif effect for a Black Lives Matter benefit T-shirt.

Vol 4 (1972)

Source: fontsinuse.com Internet Archive. License: All Rights Reserved.

The cover for Sabbath’s fourth album, appropriately titled Vol 4, continues the theme of extra-large, extra-bold type from Master of Reality. As with the precursor, the design is attributed to Bloomsbury Group with photography by Keef – this time credited by his real name, Keith Macmillan. For this release, Keef’s photography was brought back onto the cover, showing Ozzy with arms raised, giving his signature gesture of victorious peace signs ✌️ (not to be confused with the devil horns 🤘 popularized later by Ozzy’s successor, Ronnie James Dio). The image is treated more as a graphic element than a photograph, with a high-contrast monochrome effect, framed compactly on three sides with tightly-spaced, extra-heavy, geometric, sans-serif type. As with the previous albums, the name of the band and the name of the album are set in the same size and face.

Though there were plenty of heavy geometric sans-serif typefaces being used around that time with similar structural features, the style used for Vol 4 seems to be a primarily original design, and not a direct adaptation of some other existing face. The typeface in question is Gadget, available by 1971 from Alphabet Photosetting, who listed it as a copyrighted design. Dry transfer lettering sheets of a Lined variant of the face were produced by Zipatone, and they credit the design to Peter Bennett.

Source: www.flickr.com Scanned by Nick Sherman. License: CC BY-NC-SA.

Glyph set for Gadget with alternate forms for c e &, from an undated catalog by Alphabet Photosetting.

License: All Rights Reserved.

The striped variant, Gadget Lined, was also produced by Letraset competitor Zipatone for dry transfer lettering. This sheet from their Zipatone Designers Fonts (ZDF) range has caps in 84pt. Thanks to this adaptation, we know that Gadget is the design of Peter Bennett.

Due to the obscure nature of Gadget, many people over the years have assumed the Vol 4 titling was a case of one-off lettering and not composed with a proper typeface. As such there have been multiple typefaces in more recent years using the iconic design as inspiration for creating new typefaces. It’s interesting to see how others extrapolate the letters from the cover into an entirely re-imagined set of glyphs – with some letters matching Gadget quite closely but others being taken to totally new and different places. Some examples include OZIK, Volume Dealers, and VolumeFour.

Nick Sherman. License: CC BY-NC-SA.

A comparison of the original Gadget with related digital fonts, namely: K22 Gadget, VolumeFour, and OZIK. The latter two examples were based specifically on the cover of Vol 4, presumably without using a full alphabet of the original Gadget as a reference.

The iconic nature of Vol 4’s cover also makes it a common subject for imitation and parody, especially with assistance from those newer digital fonts.

The Vol 4 design came full circle recently when the digital VolumeFour typeface inspired by the album cover was used for promotional materials and on-stage graphics for Black Sabbath’s final show, “Back to the Beginning”, on July 5, 2025 – less than three weeks before the passing of Ozzy Osbourne.

Source: www.jambase.com JamBase. License: All Rights Reserved.

Though Black Sabbath went on to release plenty of other noteworthy albums, the first four seem especially foundational. They are also unique in their common use of obscure typefaces, and their involvement of Keef for visuals.

Finding proper identifications for these typefaces has only been possible with the efforts of others, sometimes as a collaborative effort that unfolded over literal years in the comments of old Fonts In Use posts. Special thanks are due to Florian Hardwig, Daylight Fonts, Mark Simonson, Patrick Concannon, and Fontastique Faces. Additionally, Kory Grow’s interview with Keith Macmillan for Rolling Stone was extremely insightful, even though it didn’t discuss specifics of typography. Finally, investigative work for articles like this would be nearly impossible without Discogs and the Internet Archive.

If you have any further information about these typefaces or their use on the Black Sabbath records, please leave a message in the comments below or on the separate entries for each album. Those entries include more details about supporting typefaces, with additional detailed images:

• Black Sabbath
• Paranoid
• Master of Reality
• Vol 4

✌️

Surfer Girl is the third studio album by The Beach Boys, released in 1963 on Capitol Records. It marked the first time Brian Wilson was credited as the group's sole producer and features early classics like the title track “Surfer Girl”, “Little Deuce Coupe”, and “In My Room”.

The album title and band name is set in an italicized version of Latin Condensed. Song names are set in what appears to be Inserat-Grotesk and another, less compressed sans that’s yet unidentified. The cover photo was taken by Capitol Records staff photographer Ken Veeder. The cover was designed by Capitols in-house art department.

[More info on Discogs]

The back cover features News Gothic and Century Schoolbook.

Decca SLK 16834-P. Ted Heath’s name is in Univers; the track list in Akzidenz-Grotesk.

Ted Heath (1902–1969) was a British big band leader. His 1967 album Swing Is King was issued in a number of cover variants. The image above shows what I believe to be the original design. The photo depicts royal insignia – crown, orb and scepter – on a throne, surrounded by musical instruments, with red curtains in the back. Above, the title is set in capitals from an ornamented typeface. It’s Karnac, which originated at the Dickinson Type Foundry in Boston in 1884, and was adopted for phototypesetting by VGC in 1967. The typeface choice continues the theme of regal pomp. It certainly helped that some of the ornamentation in John F. Cumming’s design echoes the fleurs-de-lis seen on the crown.

The variant shown below is an example of a fine cover ruined by series design: someone at Decca/London Records decided that it additionally had to feature the large numeral 4 from the Phase 4 Stereo design (cf. Chacksfield Plays the Beatles’ Song Book). The already complex photo is now cut up by thick white lines. And there wasn’t enough space left at the top, so the title had to be crammed into the small field at the top left. Too much elements, and too little space for Karnac to breathe.

A German reissue from 1969 (last image) replaces Karnac with Moore Swash, a VGC original by James H. Moore and shows the artist’s name in Times New Roman. For some reason, the photograph was mirrored for this variant.

[More info on Discogs]

London Records SP 44104. The track names are here set in Trade Gothic.

The gatefold has the liner notes set in Trade Gothic Condensed, with the numeral 4 shown in negative. The text about Phase 4 Stereo on the right uses Century Schoolbook. Lowercase Futura serves for the heading.

Decca DS 3198/1-2 double LP

A Group Called Smith is the first album by American rock band Smith. It was released in July 1969 by Dunhill Records.

The album art design is credited to Apple Graphics, and the pictures to photographer Paul Slaughter.

Karnac is used for the band name, accompanied by Baker Signet for “a group called” which is the beginning of the album title.

[More info on Discogs]

Detail with the title lockup

The small text on the back cover is set in Univers.

A Child’s Garden of Grass started out as a handbook written by Jack S. Margolis and Richard Clorfene, first published by Contact Books in 1969. In 1971, it was adapted into A Child’s Garden of Grass (A Pre-Legalization Comedy), a long-playing record produced and directed by Ron Jacobs, along with Margolis.

Dave Davison’s Fandango is used for the title both on the album cover and on the paperback reissue of the handbook by Pocket Books, as well as for the promotional campaign. Fandango is similar to Davison Bolero, with noticeable differences – such as Fandango having additional ornaments in certain glyphs or double notches in letters such as O and D. Both Fandango and Bolero are modelled after Central’s Othello.

The album was art directed “in a joint effort” by Robert L. Heimall and William S. Harvey. John Balsley styled the photo. It features all kinds of topical items from marijuana plants, a hookah, tobacco crumbs, papers, and matchboxes to a Lady Justice scale, a package of Stoned Wheat Thins, pinback buttons, headphones, a can of air freshener with green leaves, and a Monopoly board.

[More info on Discogs]

There are some words at the top left of the back cover that use Smoke (“GRASS”), Flirt (“MARIJUANA”) and Karnac (“CANNABIS SATIVA”). Track list and credits are set in sober Helvetica.

Cover of the handbook as reissued by Pocket Books. The secondary typeface is (a phototype version of) Page No. 506.

Promotional poster by Elektra Records

A billboard on Sunset Strip, advertising the release of the album in 1971. Coincidentally, the Music Hall sign below uses a stylistically related typeface, Rubens.

Front and back of the gatefold LP

Artwork for Natalie Wildgoose and her new EP Come Into the Garden, alongside posters for her release shows at The Cardigan Arms in Leeds, and Servant Jazz Quarters in London.

A range of period typefaces are used throughout. For the EP artwork, Anglo-Saxon Caps is used for the titles and Seta Reta NF for the credits. The show posters use Schwarzkopf and P22 Arts and Crafts Hunter for headers, with a combination of Archive Garamond (bold italic), Madisonian Light, Skeleton Antique and News Gothic (medium, bold) for subheadings and body copy.

A nineteenth-century ticket for a production of M’Liss, an 1877 play based on a short story by Bret Harte. It's likely that the ticket dates to sometime in the 1880s before Harry L. Churchill, manager of the repertory company that performed the play, became ill and was hospitalized in 1890 (see the newspaper account below).

The all-caps Glyptic is for used “People’s Theatre Company,” “Harry L. Churchill,” the C in “Compliments,” and the M in “Manager”. It’s paired with lowercase letters from a Latin Condensed. The IDs of the two romans are uncertain. The one of regular width sits somewhere between a Modern/Scotch and a beefier Ionic. The wider one could be Lightface Extended or similar.

People’s Theatre Company.
This Ticket and Ten Cents will Admit one Lady to best Reserved Seat, on presentation at Box Office, or Advance Sale.
Opening Night: M’liss.
Compliments Harry L. Churchill, Manager

From the New York Clipper, July 12, 1890, p. 276.

Harry L. Churchill, who for some time has managed various repertory companies through New England, is said to be confined in an insane asylum at Greenfield, Mass. Dave Seymour, writing for Mrs. Churchill, says: “Mr. Churchill is suffering from a complication of diseases, among which are softening and paralysis of the brain. The best physicians have been consulted, and all pronounce him incurable. The diseases were brought on by overwork and mental anxiety, as of late his companies had been doing a losing business. His last work was with the C. D. Henry People's Theatre Co. His wife, Florence Churchill, is a faithful attendant.”

Source: www.flickr.com Naiad & Walter Einsel: Art from the Heart, 2008. License: All Rights Reserved.

Naiad and Walter Einsel were a couple of illustrators. They met in 1952, got married in 1953, and shared a business – first in New York and from the mid-1960s in Westport, Connecticut – often working collaboratively on commissions.

For nearly half a century, Naiad (1927–2016) and Walter (1926–1998) created elaborate Valentines for one another. A selection of these illustrations, collages, poems and sculptures were collected in the book Art from the Heart, published in 2008 by Xlibris.

Shown here is a Valentine card that Naiad made for Walter in 1993:

Valentine Love Seeds
Sow the seeds of love and reap a Magical Harvest of sweet passon fruit. — Naiad
February 19th Nineteen Ninety-three
For Walter Only

Most of the text is rendered in her signature script calligraphy. The rest is probably hand-lettering (or rubber stamps?), but two styles are based on typefaces: “Valentine” and “Walter” are in Concave Condensed, a design that originated in metal ca. 1882 at MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan in Philadelphia. “Love Seeds” features caps from De Vinne, first cast by St. Louis’s Central Type Foundry about a decade later.

To learn more about Naiad and Walter and see more of their work, see the dedicated website and the accompanying Instagram account curated and maintained by their granddaughter, Lisa Bastoni.

A Short Walk Through a Wide World is a fantasy novel written by Douglas Westerbeke, and published in 2024 by Avid Reader Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

The title typeface is Matrix Tall Semi, one of two condensed styles of the Matrix family distinguished by elongated descenders, triangle dots, amongst other details. The name of the author is in the plain semi narrow style.

"A novel" is set in what appears to be a digital version of Hogarth.

A nineteenth-century abstinence pledge card. For another card, see Touch Not, Taste Not, Handle Not.

With Malice Toward None, With Charity for All
I, the undersigned, do pledge myself, God helping me, to abstain from all intoxicating liquors, as a beverage.
Feb. 22, 1881
Mrs. R. Best

The hatched blackletter goes by the name of Title Text Open No. 3. The left-leaning script is Bulletin and the wide slab is Antique Extended.