This ad for Palmolive soap was published in the February 1928 issue of Photoplay magazine.

The tagline “Soap From Trees” is in Goudy Open. “Nature’s Gift to Beauty” is in ATF Garamond Italic, using the alternate swash N. Goudy Oldstyle is used for the body text. The subheadings use Cloister Italic.

ATF Garamond is also used for “Palmolive Radio Hour” and the following paragraph. The small text at the bottom right is in Goudy Italic.

Jane Grabhorn (1911–1973) was an artist, typographer, bookbinder, and printer from San Francisco. In the spring of 1956, an exhibition of her typographic work was shown in the Albert M. Bender Room of the Stanford University Libraries. The accompanying catalog was edited by J. Terry Bender (1926–1977), special‐collections librarian, and published by Stanford University Libraries in 500 copies.

The book was printed by Grabhorn at the Grabhorn Press herself. The cover and the title page show the device of the Colt Press. The typeface is Friar. Designed by Frederic W. Goudy in 1937 as his 105th type design and first used in a Christmas keepsake, only a few fonts were ever cast by the Village Letter Foundery. Friar is also used for titles in the bibliography. The text typeface is ATF Garamond. The red headers that mix roman capitals with italic lowercase letters might be from Goudy’s Garamont.

From the preface:

The material is grouped into three sections and arranged chronologically within each. First come the items produced by the Jumbo Press, which was Mrs. Grabhorn’s first imprint. These are followed by the books of the Colt Press, a commercial publishing venture undertaken in 1938 by Jane Grabhorn, William Matson Roth, and Jane Swinerton. The Colt Press has published thirty-five books to date and will issue its thirty-sixth this year. The last section of the catalogue is devoted to a group of additional books and ephemeral pieces designed and produced by Jane Grabhorn apart from those issued under the Jumbo and Colt imprints.

Read more about Jane Grabhorn and her Jumbo Press in Mallory Haselberger’s “The Feminist Possibilities of Print”.

30,000 on the Hoof is a Western novel by Zane Grey (1872–1939), published posthumously in 1940. Shown here is the first-edition cover by Grosset & Dunlap.

The title typeface, an all-caps roman with flare serifs and inline effect, is Atrax. “Thirty thousand” is written as a number. This way, we get to see Atrax’ numerals, which exhibit diagonal contrast – unlike the letters, which are drawn around a vertical contrast axis. With all weight apportioned to the bottom left, the zero almost looks like a dimensional ball.

If you try to learn about the origins of Atrax from a font marketplace like Monotype’s MyFonts, you’ll find that it was designed by “URW Design Staff” and that the design is owned by URW Type Foundry (a publisher acquired by Monotype in 2020). The tags hint at a date in the 1990s. That’s misleading at best, and only relates to one of the digitizations.

In fact, Atrax is a design by Heinrich Jost (1889–1948), a student of Paul Renner and Emil Preetorius. From 1923 until his premature death, Jost served as the art director for Bauer, during the type foundry’s most successful years, overlooking the release of his former teacher’s Futura. Issued in 1926, Atrax was Jost’s first published type design of his own. It was followed by Beton and Bauer Bodoni, among others.

The name of the author is added in all-caps Futura fett.

On the title page, the book’s title is set in Goudy Open. The designer apparently didn’t like this typeface’s zero, which is a monolinear circle, and used the lowercase letter o instead (in his own book, Goudy agreed).

Most of the smaller text is set in Janson, apparently using the version by Mergenthaler Linotype. Judging from the narrower Z in “ZANE”, the heading at the top of the left page is set in Monotype Janson, though. The publisher’s name at the bottom right looks like it’s Mergenthaler Linotype’s Garamond (No. 1), a design based on Stempel Garamond.

A two-page magazine ad for the computer game The Legend of Kyrandia: Malcolm’s Revenge, published in vol. 2, no. 1 of PC Gamer (US), dated January 1995.

The tagline is in Matrix Inline Script, while the bulk of the text is in Deepdene, with (faux) small caps and italics. The small text at the bottom of the second page is in Helvetica Narrow and ITC Avant Garde Gothic.

With Goudy Newstyle, Judith Sutcliffe not only created the first postscript revival of Goudy’s “lost types” in 1986. Se also designed and typeset this 300 page book for Capra Press in the earliest days of Macintosh desktop publishing. The book contains a page about the types used for the book typography, including technical info on Suthcliffe’s revival.

First published in 1965, this is the revised edition of Frances S. Wing’s “classic guide to the art of decoupage” from 1970. The jacket design has an adequately restrained use of the opulent Davison Art Nouveau: just one word, set on a curve, with two protruding curls.

The rest of the title and the author name are set in Caslon No. 540, while the five lines at the bottom appear to be in Caslon 3 (a.k.a. New Caslon).

Hat tip to Justin Hoggard.

The title page features Goudy Open in roman and italic styles.

He leads the way to the Torment of the UNDEAD —

Publicity Gothic with Caslon Antique for the poster of Doctor Dracula.
From The Holding Coat:

When it comes to Independent-International, nothing is ever simple. Doctor Dracula is edited from Lucifer’s Women (1974). Director Al Adamson shot some new footage in 1981, edited it into the film and released it under its present title.

Credits are set in a phototype version of Deepdene Bold. The Independent-International logo uses Brush Script.

From Mike Ashworth:

One of the many BBC booklets issued over the years and by the mid-1930s they were, after a very staid early start design-wise, starting to get a little more thoughtful. This vignette is by “Douglas” and the pamphlet was printed at the Kynoch Press in Birmingham, the ‘house’ printers of ICI who were also indertaking external work some of a very high standard.

The booklet discusses a series of broadcast radio talks, twelve in total, that look at what made the British British and there are some assumptions that nowadays may be slightly cringeworthy, some bordering on the topic of now discredited eugenics!

Title and author name are set in tracked out caps from Koloss, designed by Jakob Erbar and first cast in 1923 by Ludwig & Mayer. Its name is the German version of Colossus, from the Ancient Greek word for a giant statue. The three lines in small roman caps use Goudy Modern, designed by Frederic Goudy in New York, USA, inspired by the caption on a French engraving. “National Character” is in Plantin, an oldstyle roman produced in 1913 by the British Monotype. It’s loosely based on types cut by Frenchman Robert Granjon and named after Antwerp-based printer Christophe Plantin. The Plantin typeface was made by American-born designer Frank Hinman Pierpont, with help from Fritz Stelzer, his assistant of German origin.

One Morning in Maine was —

First published by The Viking Press in April 1952. Published on the same day in the Dominion of Canada by The Macmillan Company of Canada Limited. Set in Goudy Modern types by H.O. Bullard, Inc. and lithographed in the United States of America by Reehl Litho Company. — [imprint]

The cover is set in Warren Chappell’s Lydian Bold, which has also been used for other books written and illustrated by Robert McCloskey and published by The Viking Press, see Homer Price (1943) and the Henry Reed series (1958–1970).

Howard O. Bullard, Inc. was a typesetting company in New York City. In 1937, it was located at 150 Varick Street. Goudy Modern appears in an undated (1960s?) typeface catalog of theirs, and Lydian is even used for the title page of another specimen by Bullard.

Title page

Cover of the first edition, The Viking Press.

Cover of the Junior Literary Guild edition

Title and author are repeated on the back of the jacket. The illustration wraps around.

Compiled by Susie Reinhardt and released by Trikont in 2011. The typeface is Goudy Stout, originally designed by Frederic Goudy in 1930 for his Village Letter Foundery. It was digitally revived a few times, most extensively by CastleType. Jason Castle:

At first I was a bit reluctant to revive it, if for no other reason than Goudy’s own admission that he created this design “in a moment of typographic weakness.”* It finally got to the point that I had to recreate the face, and from the response that I've gotten, I'm glad I did! This CastleType revival has extensive language support, including Cyrillic and Greek Modern.

The version used for this record cover is probably Vince Connare’s interpretation, though, which comes bundled with Office and other Microsoft products.

*) Here’s the full quote by Goudy, from A Half-Century of Type Design and Typography: 1895–1945, Vol. 2:

In a moment of typographic weakness I attempted to produce a “black” letter that would interest those advertisers who like the bizarre in their print. It was not the sort of a letter I cared for, but requests from some advertisers who saw the first drawings induced me to cut one size and try out the effect. I never cut any but the one size, although I threatened to cut other sizes if any were demanded. None were!

Between 1978 and 1979 Andrew Hoyem undertook the ambitious production of an edition of Moby Dick for his Arion Press. All text in the book was hand-set in metal type (one character at a time) and letterpress printed on custom hand-made paper. To accompany the text throughout, 100 stunning wood engravings were cut by renowned printmaker and illustrator Barry Moser. Due to its high level of craftsmanship, the edition was limited to 265 copies, and is considered a masterpiece of modern bookmaking — named by the Grolier Club as one of the “100 Most Beautiful Books of the 20th Century”.

In 1981, the University of California Press worked with Hoyem to offer an offset-printed trade edition of the book. These reduced scale reprints are now widely available in hardcover and paperback formats which maintain much of the beauty found in the original — including its typography.

The typeface used for the main body type — Goudy Modern — has a rustic texture which matches both the story and illustrations perfectly. It also seems fitting that a typeface by such a quintessential American type designer like Frederic Goudy was used to set one of the most quintessential American novels.

To complement the body type, a set of large capitals were designed specifically for the book’s initial caps and titling. The stately face, aptly named Leviathan (not to be confused with H&FJ’s face of the same name), was designed by Charles Bigelow & Kris Holmes, of later Lucida fame. As the name implies, Leviathan was intended for very large sizes, where its sharp details and exaggerated flaring can really shine.

The Leviathan caps work beautifully on the book’s title page.

Unfortunately Leviathan never made it to the dustjacket of the trade edition.

Considering the wide spectrum of writing styles that appear throughout Moby Dick, Hoyem’s typographic restraint is impressive. Using just one weight of one typeface, in only two sizes, he manages to compose most all of the story’s narration, technical documentation, asides, poetry, quotations, etc … not to mention administrative text like captions and folios. With a touch of Leviathan’s stylistic flair, the “just enough is more” typographic palette relies on smart typesetting to communicate the sometimes-complex hierarchy instead of a mess of weights and sizes.

The majority of the book’s text’s is set using just one weight of one typeface, in only two sizes.

The footnotes and inset illustrations could sometimes use a bit more breathing room, and I don’t understand the practice of leaving one or two lines of type above illustrations that might otherwise be pushed to the top of the column. But other than that, the book is laid out beautifully, with ample margins, a perfect measure (clocking in around 65–70 characters per line), and generally pleasing proportions overall.

A spread from the book, with one of Barry Moser’s boxwood engravings.

Those looking to use Goudy Modern for digital typesetting have a couple options. Though Goudy Modern MT and LTC Goudy Modern may appear quite similar at a glance, the LTC version retains a bit more of the quirkiness that might be felt when printing from the original metal type. It also provides more functionality, like upper- and lowercase numerals, stylistic alternate glyphs, additional language support, etc. Unfortunately, as far as I know, Leviathan was never produced as a digital font.

The 18pt Goudy Modern body type used in the original printing was cast by MacKenzie & Harris (the typefounding sibling to Arion press) on a their Thompson type caster and set by hand. Arion had enough type to set about 36 pages at a time, which would be printed, then redistributed and used again to compose the remaining pages. Bigelow & Holmes’ design for Leviathan was produced by Berthold as a film font for phototypesetting, which was then used to produce magnesium plates for printing. (Many thanks to Dave Johnston and the crew at M&H and Arion Press for the additional information.)