Dust jacket (front)

First edition of Red Planet, a 1949 science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein about students at boarding school on the planet Mars.

Cover art and interior illustrations by Clifford Geary. The reversed all-caps typography on the dust jacket pairs Warren Chappell’s Lydian (1938) with Futura. The cover exclusively uses the iconic sans serif designed by Paul Renner and first cast by the Bauer foundry in the late 1920. Technically, it might also be Intertype’s recutting under the original name (1939), or Spartan (1939), which was cut cooperatively by ATF and Linotype, and “is almost indistinguishable from Futura”, according to Mac McGrew.

Cover and spine

On the title page, Futura is complemented by another early geometric sans serif: The light style used for “A Colonial Boy From Mars” and the illustrator credit is from Vogue. This Futura follower was released by Intertype in 1930. Here it’s easily distinguishable by the long bar in G and the M with vertical stems. Intertype offered alternates that stay closer to Renner’s design, though.

The back and the inner flaps of the jacket additionally feature Lydian Cursive. The blurb is typeset in ATF’s Bookman Oldstyle.

Emergence Magazine is a quarterly online publication with an annual printed edition. Each issue features a theme explored through innovative digital media as well as the written word.

Designed with the same aesthetic and interactive sensibility as their online presence, the print magazine is filled with stories, along with URLs that direct you to films, multimedia experiences, and companion podcasts that feature author-narrated versions of all the essays.

Our inaugural print edition is a collection of essays, poems, adapted multimedia stories, and photo essays from our first four issues. Tactile and intimate, this edition spans 296 color-filled pages and six different textures of paper—inviting you to slow down and enjoy these stories over time.

Studio Airport, also responsible for the design of the magazine’s website, did a very nice job with the layout and art direction. The magazine is transformed into a lively ecosystem by skilfully juggling colours, papers and typefaces, to the point of pairing romans and italics from different families (Monotype's Italian Old Style with the not yet released Fragen Italic, or Rosart with GT Super Italic). Which is kind of uncommon, and surprisingly charming!

A title page set in Fragen Light Italic, with name of the author in GT America. On the next spread, the lead paragraph is set in Italian Old Style and the (blurry) text in Rosart, with folio in GT America.

Chapter introductions are, for most, set in Italian Old Style, with Fragen Italic for the name of the featured artist/writer. Folio set in Rosart, running title in GT America.

Another example of chapter introduction combining Italian Old Style and Fragen Italic. Folio and running title set in GT America.

Several spreads, showing a variety of layouts, colors and papers.

Article set in Rosart and GT Super Italic, printed in grey paper.

Interview set in GT America for the initials, Pica for the questions and Rosart for the answers. Printed on grey paper.

Folio set in GT America. Printed on glossy paper.

Text set in Rosart and GT America, with pull quote set in Fragen Italic. Printed in two Pantone spot colors, blue and red.

Folio and title set in Pica. Small page on white paper, set in GT America

Atelier Dyakova describes this project:

Creamier brings together 100 of the most exciting contemporary artists emerging today, each chosen by prominent international curator. Original resource, Creamier truly reflects the current moment and is vital for both those in the art world and those that are new to contemporary art.

The book had to be radically different from its four predecessors. A tough design problem — the content is still the same: 10 international curators choose 10 contemporary artists...but how to make it look different?

The frustration to find an original solution has propelled me to abandon traditional book format and transform Creamier into a large format newspaper. The idea is quite simple — announcing 100 new artists is a bit like making news. Inspired by the Financial Times, 300 pink unbound pages come packaged in bespoke portfolio.

The book's design showcases beautifully Frank Heine's Tribute (Emigre) by giving it central stage. The overall heavier weight of the strokes, and relatively low-contrast for a serif typeface, creates a feeling of contemporary and classical at the same time. There are just enough quirky details in it to suggest whimsy making it a good fit for a book on contemporary art. The face has a great italic with many alternates that this design takes advantage of. Tribute is also paired well with the sturdy Bold weight of Neuzeit S.

Front Cover

Cover of the English edition of Vägmärken, a book by former UN secretary general, Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–1961). Walbaum is used in roman and italic styles, with rotated Albertus for “Faber paper covered editions”.

After the original Swedish version was published in 1963, the English translation came out in 1964. The translation was done by noted Swedish scholar Leif Sjöberg, and was refined by the poet W. H. Auden, who also wrote a foreword. This brought the book immediate literary notice, and even a front-page rave in The New York Times Book Review. It is highly regarded as a classic of contemporary spiritual literature. — Wikipedia

It took me a while to identify this excellent Albertus-flavored typeface by Sandrine Nugue, but I’m glad I did! Check out the huge cast of alternate characters she designed for Infini on her website. The roman caps used in the top right corner are from Lyon, which is also the typeface used for the text of the book.

This new translation of the Aeneid by David Ferry (b. 1924) was published by the University of Chicago Press in September 2017. The jacket design and artwork, as well as the book itself, are all by Matt Avery.

This book is a collection of essays by John Berger, named after one of them: ‘Art and Property Now’. It is the first Croatian translation of Berger published in book form. It is also the first book in a newly founded series called ‘Tendencija’ (eng. tendency) which will deal with topics like art in the real world, the political aspects of art and the potential of the artist as an activist. The book was published by BLOK with support from the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung.

The layout and type choice are a contemporary interpretation of pocket-sized books printed in Europe (more specifically Yugoslavia) during the 1970s and 1980s. The book uses bolder weights of Druk for titles, a rigid sans serif that combines very nicely with the delicate and balanced curves of William, a modern Caslon interpretation used for body text and the cover.

The design contrasts the full color coated cover with the more rough interiors printed in Berger’s tradition, only in black on uncoated paper.

11×18.5 cm, 94 pp, stitched and glued in Otabind style.

A mysterious and modest flea market find – a booklet (150×243 mm) containing the lyrics of three Leonard Cohen albums: Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967), Songs From a Room (1969) and Songs of Love and Hate (1971). Other than a thank you to “Hank of Casterun”, there is no information included about publisher or a publication date.

The title is set with Signal or – more likely – the printer used Lettergieterij Amsterdam’s version named Sirene. For some reason, the letters are slightly disconnected. The interior uses another Lettergieterij Amsterdam release: Hollandse Mediaeval, designed by Sjoerd Hendrik de Roos in 1912.

Table of contents, with CBS Records release code for each album. A odd numbering is used for the list of songs: 1, 2, 4, 4, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9 etc.

Detail. Zooming in on the type reveals small imperfections: for instance, most lowercase o’s have a bit of dirt on the right side.

Ike Zimmerman’s Some People Are Decent, all set in ITC Bernase Roman.

Fictional book covers designed by Teddy Blanks (CHIPS) for Listen Up Philip, a movie that refers to the late Philip Roth, who repeatedly published with pseudonyms during his career. See also this post about the movie poster and David Haglund’s feature for Slate, and make sure to head over to the CHIPS website to watch some movie excerpts (with a lot more book covers) in their case story.

Listen Up Philip is a dark comedy about a young writer named Philip (Jason Schwartzman), his photographer girlfriend Ashley (Elisabeth Moss) and Ike Zimmerman (Jonathan Pryce), the respected older author who becomes his mentor. CHIPS worked closely with director Alex Ross Perry to design believable (and subtly satirical) book covers not only for Philip’s relatively recent releases, but for Zimmerman’s entire back catalog.

The style of each book conforms to design trends and tropes of the era it was supposed to have been published, using typefaces that would have been widely available at the time. The covers feature prominently in several key scenes.

–– CHIPS

Airbrushed lettering and Futura on Ike Zimmerman’s Audit. Blanks: “Audit is a direct rip-off of the first edition cover of Martin Amis’s Money, which I love.”

Madness & Women, set in Pistilli Roman (or Didoni or Eloquent?)

Tightly spaced caps from Letraset’s Compacta Light are used for The Cinch — A Very Easy Novel and The Shrug — A Very Passive Novel (below).

Blanks: “The Cinch and The Shrug are both attempts at Raymond Chandler-esque detective novels featuring the same private eye character. I loved the idea that Zimmerman, for all his literary clout, harbored a secret desire to write popular genre fiction, but couldn’t quite cut it because he was too pretentious or whatever. I also loved the idea that they would have the same exact cover, as if the publisher had decided to market them like a Sue Grafton series.”

Ike Zimmerman’s A Hero’s Home, featuring Futura caps with the Os substituted by orbs. Probably inspired by this cover for First Flights to the Moon (1970)?

Necessity Never Rest, in 1970s classic ITC Korinna, with period-typical tight letter- and linespacing.

Details from Madness & Women and Hoffman’s Ghost, Color Wheel Books hardcover edition, in Bauer Bodoni Black Condensed.

Ike Zimmerman for CWB Paperbacks, referencing Penguin Modern Classics? Text set in New Century Schoolbook.

Ashley Kane reading another, newer edition of Madness & Women, with a cover in a yet unidentified typeface.

The jacket for Ample Profanity uses all-caps Helvetica Bold.

Blanks: “I, Zimmerman apes the cover of Roth’s autobiography, The Facts, which is designed by Milton Glaser, though I didn’t get the font quite right.” It uses (compressed) ITC Cheltenham.

Blanks: “A Woman’s Point of View is from 1988, which is right around the time everyone was switching to digital type, and for whatever reason, there’s a style of cover from around then that is self-consciously “classic”—small type centered on the page, an evocative vintage illustration, muddy, muted colors.”

Too Much Everything, in a light italic cut from Archer.

Blanks: “Bad Eating is Zimmerman’s most recent novel, from 2008, and I was going for a bright colors, big sans-serif type [Interstate Bold], extremely cropped photo, Chip Kidd-ish kind of thing, or almost a slight nod to a Jonathan Franzen cover.”

Philip Lewis Friedman’s Join The Street Parade, in outlined Gill Sans caps.

This cover for Obidant is set in caps from Knockout (probably the No. 47 weight). Blanks: “… the cover for Philip’s new book, Obidant, with its giant type in the clouds, was absolutely meant as a reference to Infinite Jest.”

Philip Lewis Friedman’s Obidant, a novel published with six different covers that look more like non-fiction. From top left to bottom right: Bembo, a bold condensed Bodoni, Futura Maxi, Caslon 224 (with its compressed f), ITC Franklin Gothic ExtraCompressed, and Bodoni Egyptian.

From the end titles: When the Chips Are Down. Collected stories by Ike Zimmerman, in Palisade Graphic (or Fast Freddy NF?).The title was chosen in reference to Blanks’ design studio CHIPS. Credits in Cabernet.

From the end titles: Josh Fawn’s The Exploding Head Trick, 1990s. Cover in Cholla Sans.

From the end titles: Yvette Dussart, The First Anarchist, set in Poetica.

From the end titles: Philip Lewis Friedman, Join The Street Parade. The font is Blender.

A Daughter’s Point of View by Melanie Zimmerman. Cover in Bembo.

Ashley Kane’s photo book Liberty. Cover set in Univers Bold.

The book Listy Matke / Letters to Mother, published by Varštak / Ladislav Tkáčik studio in partnership with the Museum of Ján Cikker, presents a unique collection of personal letters by the Slovak composer Ján Cikker (1911–1989) who wrote and sent them to his mother during the period 1917–1963. The collection is an important source of deeper insight into his creation as well as an explanation of several events related to composer’s life and the reflection of the wider context of capturing the contemporary cultural and social conditions in Slovakia.

The publication was designed by Ladislav Tkáčik, using Xavier Dupré’s Garalda throughout the book: “I was looking for a script that would be suitable for extensive texts, complex, with musical finesse, traditional, Renaissance and also modern, like the modernist compositions of Ján Cikker, who tried to redefine the musical tradition … Both the layout and the chosen font do not want to dominate and push over the text, on the contrary they want to retreat to the background and let it sound without obstacles… I chose Garalda just because of that.”

Romance Journal:

Whether positive or negative, emotions are often the driving force behind the decisions we make. And whether or not we admit to having them, they vibrate into the atmosphere, where other people can feel them.

The first issue explores the role of emotion in life and work through the lens of some of the most compelling—and professionally successful—creative women of today. In opening up about their complex emotional lives, in some cases for the first time, these women paradoxically reveal a considerable strength.

Masthead and most of the body is set in Optima, constituting one of the best uses of this classic that I’ve seen this century. Supporting elements are in the very trendy bold extended weights of GT America, while headlines stand with personality thanks to the RoAndCo house typeface, Rococo.

Booklet published on the occasion of Martin Eder’s solo show at Galerie Eigen+Art, Leipzig.

The interview in German is set in narrow columns of Optima. Questions are underlined, answers have a large first-line indent.

The title page introduces a theme that is repeated throughout the 36-pages booklet: A small block in the quirky italic Rondka Urtyp interferes with a center-aligned pull quote in large caps, in this case from Plantin Light.

Peignot loses most of its eccentricity when used in all caps.

The version of Stahl used here is StahlLUX, a private digitization by Annette Lux of HIT.

Jan Sonntag of Sonntag Fonts studied at Gerrit Rietveld Academie under Gerard Unger’s supervision. His Hildegard was published by Linotype in 2004.

The English translation is set in Albertus. Interviewer and interviewee are marked with initials.

The closing page uses Plantin Semibold, Semibold Italic, and Bold.