From the case study by Pentagram:

The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia is arguably the best conservatory in the world, offering a tuition-free undergraduate and graduate programs in instrumental and vocal performance, as well as composition. Known for its rigorous training and selectivity, the institute admits a small number of exceptionally talented students each year and has produced many accomplished musicians and composers who have gone on to have successful careers in classical music, opera, and other genres. Distinguished alumni include Leonard Bernstein, Samuel Barber, Lang Lang, Nino Rota and Ned Rorem, among others.

Pentagram has designed a new visual identity for Curtis, launched to coincide with its 100th anniversary in 2024. Sound and dynamic motion are integral to the identity. The typography of the logo extends to a custom-drawn typeface, also called Curtis. The system also includes a special centennial logo that kinetically expands like the amplification of sound.

Dynamite! is the second studio album by Ike & Tina Turner, released with Sue Records in May of 1962, the year the two musicians got married in Tijuana, Mexico. That marriage didn’t last: Tina filed for divorce in 1976. In her 1986 autobiography I, Tina, she revealed that Ike was abusive throughout their marriage, which led to her suicide attempt in 1968.

Their relationship with the record company came to an end much quicker:

In November 1962, Ike and Tina filed a $330,000 joint lawsuit with Placid Music Corporation against Sue Records, Saturn Music, and Juggy Murray for “failing and refusing to give an accounting and pay certain royalties.” They also charged that Sue “withheld and concealed over $100,000” of their earnings from them.

For something more pleasant, let’s have a look at the typography. The uncredited designer brought together five different sans serifs; two from the classic American Gothic branch, and three belonging to the modernist geometric genre. The artists’ names are set in Alternate Gothic. In a self-referential manner, the title was blown to pieces by arranging condensed caps from Franklin Gothic on an shaking baselines and having lines cut through the letterforms. The explosion itself is illustrated by a starburst with six of the song names emanating on various angles, set in what looks like Metromedium No. 2.

The back cover appears to combine another two American Futura followers: while the big caps at the top are from Tempo Heavy – distinguished by the wide K, the low bar in A, and the narrow R – the track listing and the liner notes are set in Spartan, with its double-story a.

[More info on Discogs]

Artwork for Instrumentalities and Audible Volitions, the latest release from Luís Bittencourt. In his words: “Percussion is an art in which sonic plurality is celebrated, and the notion of a musical instrument is constantly challenged and reconfigured.”

Sunburst is the debut novel by Canadian science fiction novelist and poet Phyllis Gotlieb (1926–2009). The cover for the first edition (Gold Medal Books, 1964) was designed by Richard M. Powers.

While the synopsis and the author’s name are set in Alternate Gothic, the fractured letterforms used for the title are from a different condensed sans. The curved leg of R together with the dark bottom right part of N and the high waistline (see B) made me think of Walter Haettenschweiler’s Schmalfette Grotesk. That would have made this find a perfect companion to Nick’s contribution about the Abram Schlemowitz exhibition poster. Likewise created in the United States in the 1960s, it also features sliced up letters from an alphabet drawn by a Swiss designer – in that case Walter Käch (both Käch and Haettenschweiler were students of Ernst Keller in Zurich) – which circulated in the form of a source book. Other details like the thinning of the R’s waist and especially the apertures of S are different from Schmalfette Grotesk, though. Permanent Headline was issued in 1964, but is a tad more angular. My best guess is Inserat-Grotesk, or a phototype version thereof. Among typefaces that were available at the time, it comes closest for the mentioned details, cf. this specimen.

From the book’s back cover, via Joachim Boaz’s blog:

In the hideous aftermath of the atomic sunburst. The people of Sorrel Park had been written off. Now they were nothing but a kind of human garbage, festering and hopeless.

In the center of town lived the worst of the human garbage–and by far the most dangerous. They were a breed of terrible children, possessed by terrifying supernormal powers. They were a new race of monster bred out of the sunburst, and if they ever broke loose they would destroy the world…

[More info on ISFDB]

The title compared to Inserat-Grotesk as shown in an undated specimen of foundry type by Adcraft Typographers, Inc., kindly scanned and shared by James Puckett (CC BY)

Gradient Type’s PolySans (incl. the Mono), Klim Type Foundry’s Mānuka and Florian Karsten's FK Roman are used as working typefaces for the new Verge. The design was developed in-house. From The Verge’s release notes:

We’ve got a whole new Verge for you today. Radically new. Sometimes you just have to blow things up and start over.

Yes, we have a sharp new logo that started with the idea of an unfinished interface between the present and the future. Yes, we have a bright new color palette that highlights our work in confident new ways. Yes, we have new typefaces across the board, including serifs for our body copy. Look at these ink traps in our new headline font, PolySans. I love them.

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This is a personal redesign of “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” by the French duo Daft Punk, originally released in October 2001 as the fourth single from their second studio album Discovery.

The cover is exclusively made with code in Processing, generating over 4,000 possibile combinations. To make it kind of glitchy, I used the copy function, taking adjacent tiles and copying with a sorta of delay, in order to noise wave generated numbers.

I selected the best image in terms of negative space and overall equilibrium, and next I designed the back and the inside of the CD.

Made as a student project in the Corso di Design Grafico, Elementi di Grafica Editoriale, supervised by prof.ssa Moira Torresi at Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna. Printed on Fedrigoni Sirio Black 220g. The font in use is BC Falster Grotesk by Briefcase Type.

See my Behance page for more images and a description in Italian.

The Wrecking Company Lounge, the lounge that offers a smashing good time. Located near the University of Tennessee, on I-40 & 17th St., Knoxville, Tennessee.

Curteichcolor Card 7EK-280 CAPA-026394

The design studio Ordinary People created the graphic identity for the second studio album of the K-pop boy group Tomorrow X Together. In The Chaos Chapter: Freeze, the Korean boy group deals with the topic of feeling insignificant, empty, and frozen when facing a perceived ‘crumbling world’. The graphic identity visualizes this core theme of the album through the fragmentation of various graphic elements. The release is a three-part album packed with a wide variety of booklets, posters, cards, stickers and more.

Monopol by Nguyen Gobber was used to create the key visual, to set most of the title elements and design various other, decorative graphics. For the English texts, Ciutadella by Emtype Foundry was used while the Korean texts are set in Sandoll Gothic Neo2 by Sandoll.

[More info on Discogs]

Nolla Games of Finland uses Merriweather in the promotional video for the game Noita.

The music clip for “Awesome” by Valee was shot by Antoinne Bryant and art directed by the Sang Bleu team. Additional visuals were provided by Swiss Typefaces and M(A)T(A).

KRSNA & BRRR are part of the Lab typefaces, available from Swiss Typefaces.

Omelet, an independent creative company based in Los Angeles, recently launched a rebrand inspired by the famous Leonard Cohen quote, “there’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

The rebrand was led by type designer, typographer, and illustrator Marta Cerdà Alimbau. While Omelet has historically shied away from the obvious egg and breakfast puns, Cerdà helped them to embrace a cracked egg as a metaphor for the destructive act that can lead to creative work.

A crack runs across Omelet’s logo, set in Roslindale, and this motif comes to define the identity, with subtle yet effective animations fracturing headlines and bold fields of color. Meanwhile, Roboto and Roboto Slab do the heavy lifting, used for headlines and supporting text on the web and in print.

Cerdà chose Roslindale because its capital O is particularly egg shaped, an all-too-perfect fit for an egg-themed brand and a company whose name happens to start with that letter. Cerdà describes her selection further:

In terms of proportion, Roslindale’s uppercase “O” is as narrow as an egg. It is bold enough to have the strength a logo should have. And it has a retro touch, yet still being very contemporary, which gives the brand a unique fresh look.

Finnish studio Tsto designed the identity for Generation 2017, a triennial exhibition showcasing emerging artists aged 15–23 at the Amos Anderson Art Museum in Helsinki.

They used only one weight of Proto Grotesk, and its distinctive uppercase G, pulling various tricks to energize the composition on the various layouts.

Cracking Art’s Arte Rigenerante (“Regenerative Art”) is a double installation curated by Stefano Papetti, Elisa Mori and Giorgia Berardinelli and shown from 7 July to 30 September 2018 at the Giardino “Nuttate de Lune” in San Benedetto del Tronto and the Fortezza di Acquaviva Picena.

Paolo Rinaldi’s typography for the accompanying booklet combines cracked caps from Gotham Bold with text set in Zenon.

BUM ZANG TUMB – The incendiary creation of the universe is a curatorial proposal that reflects on contradictions, ideology and the human condition from the Italian Futurism.

As Steven Heller noted in this week’s interview for Lubalin 100, ITC Avant Garde Gothic has seen more than its share of misuse in the nearly 50 years since it was released. So much so, even early on, that its author Herb Lubalin is said to have regretted ever designing it. In many cases it’s the typeface’s many alternates and ligatures that are abused, but one designer who treated them with respect and skill is Christof Gassner. See his logo for Canton, for example, or these excellent booklets for German television network ZDF.

Gassner is a fan of Lubalin, and it’s apparent in his work. He didn’t hide his admiration in interviews, either. Two years after Lubalin’s death, Gassner was featured in U&lc, Vol. 10, No. 2 (June 1983):

“I have two big ideals (sic) for my typographical works: First, the calligraphers and book artists before Gutenberg: second, Herb Lubalin, who gave back, with his epochal work, the lost imagination to typography.”

From the same U&lc article:

Gassner’s work has appeared in U&lc before, but you wouldn't know it; each time the look is different, with new surprises in typographic design. It would be more apt to call his work typographic illustration, for he has a gift for making type talk to us, even when we don't understand the language. He was born in Zurich and was educated in the highly respected “Swiss” school of graphic design at the Kunstgewerbeschule. Upon graduation, he went to Germany and discovered, to his amazement, “There were other typefaces available than Helvetica.” This profound experience, he has aptly demonstrated in his inventive typographies.

The brochures featured here advertise theatrical programming on ZDF from 1979 to 1983. Each 21×19.8 cm issue has black-and-gold covers and three to six opening spreads of display typography, much of it masterfully set in Avant Garde, and some in other fantastical designs, including Gassner’s own typeface, Knirsch. All issues credit Gassner for graphic design and Jobst Barkewitz for production.

My thanks to Florian who graciously received my lucky find from a German dealer and scanned two favorite spreads from each booklet. We gladly add it to our small collection of Avant Garde Used Right.

Gassner substitutes umlauts with small-E alternatives, tucking them inside letters or between them.

Gassner may have pulled some of his lettering from the popular Lettera sourcebooks by Armin Haab and Walter Haettenschweiler. The flourished ‘L’, for example, is found in Lettera 2 and credited to a 16th-century Italian manuscript (namely the works of Vespasiano Amphiareo, 1554). The superornate Fraktur ‘N’ is from Paulus Franck’s Schatzkammer, Nuremberg, 1601.

‘SE’ and ‘SA’ appear to be custom Avant Garde ligatures. ‘A’ is from Romano, an alphabet designed by Spanish artist Ramón Stirling in the early 19th century and reprised in Lettera 3 (1968).

The 3-dimensional letters aren’t from Avant Garde Gothic, but rather based on a bold Futura.

“Heroes (1976) was a revealing memoir, detailing the collapse of his first marriage, alongside his own hero-worship of figures such as the novelist William Styron and Ted Kennedy.”
— Joe McGinniss obituary, The Guardian

Book seller Bluestocking Books credits the jacket design to Neil Stuart.

Breaking a glass and making a label with it

For centuries, glass has held wine in cups, jars and bottles. Blown, cut or shaped, the variety of glass colours stands out. Clear, yellow, green, blue … each colour serves to represent a regional varietal from the DO Terra Alta old wines selection. The Braille varnish finishing gives the label an effect of volume and reflection similar to that of real glass, tricking your eyes and surprising onlookers.

Party poster for BTW at TPF in London. Bariol Bold only.

161 Leavenworth Street.