Letterpress printed Souvenir Ticket for the 2026 Bay Area Printers’ Fair & Wayzgoose. Printed in 2025 from vintage handset metal type, in order from top:

Caslon Bold Extended (1911)
Futura schmalhalbfett (1936)
Lilith (1930)
Figaro (1940)
Hellenic Wide (c.1954*)
Festival Titling (1952)
Gill Sans Cameo Ruled (1935)
Antique Condensed (pinmark from MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan, 19th century)
Ad Lib (1961)
Antique Shaded (1913)
Mistral (1953)
Plymouth (1900)

All borders are cast by Stephenson Blake, printed from new-in-box old stock fonts.

*) Note that Hellenic Wide is a 1950s adaptation of the same letter style as the 19th century Antique Extended.

This cover is for the 1960 US reissue (EMI-Capitol) of the 1958 UK release (His Master’s Voice) of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s recording of Gustav Holst’s The Planets, conducted by Malcolm Sargent. The image doesn’t depict any of the featured planets, though. If I’m not mistaken, the shown galaxy isn’t even the Milky Way, but Messier 81, also known as Bode’s Galaxy.

The title has lowercase letters from Hellenic Wide, arranged on a bouncing baseline. While the line at the bottom is set in all-caps Stymie, “HOLST” is in Stymie’s precursor, Litho Antique. The stereo note at the top features Venus Bold Extended.

[More info on Discogs]

You’re Gonna Hear From Me is one of three albums that Hawaiian crooner Don Ho (1930–2007) and his backing group The Aliis released in 1966. The cover design featuring photos of Ho and a blonde woman enclosed in male and female signs is by Ed Thrasher.

The singer’s name is in Neptun, a typeface that originated in 1900 at the Aktiengesellschaft für Schriftgießerei und Maschinenbau in Offenbach/Main, Germany. In 1962, Photo-Lettering made a phototype revival as part of their Art Nouveau Xenotypes 1895–1905. The Art Nouveau-infused hybrid between roman and blackletter saw renewed use in subsequent years, and more versions of it were also issued by others, including by Letraset.

The album’s title is set in tightly spaced lowercase letters from Helvetica, while the song names are shown in all caps.

[More info on Discogs]

The title treatment for The Fantastic Four: First Steps was first teased in 2024 by Marvel Studios for its feature film scheduled for cinematic screening in 2025.

With the conscious choice to reintroduce adding “the” before “Fantastic” and a nod to the earlier comics of the Fantastic Four series, this main title is typeset in DJR’s Condor Compressed Medium Italic with modified letters F and c in “Fantastic”.

The new number 4 logo design also present on the Fantastic Four hero uniforms takes sole presence, omitting a redundant use of the word “Four” in the titles as they have been presented in the title treatment’s history so far.

Above the main title we see the Marvel logo placed with the word “STUDIOS” set in Jason Walcott's Hooligan JF. Below we see the subtitle “FIRST STEPS” set in a slanted version of Jens Gehlhaar's FF Neuwelt Inline.

Portuguese version, with custom Q tail and r hook.

French version, with custom q.

The secondary text on this French poster is in Brother 1816.

Makeshift language extension for Vietnamese

Video: https://www.instagram.com/p/DMvb96SvCVw

Lonely Avenue (Nonesuch, USA, 2010). Cover design by John Heiden of Smog Design, with photography by Joel Meyerowitz.

Ben Folds and Nick Hornby’s collaboration album, Lonely Avenue, was released in September 2010.

The fonts used are Hellenic Wide for the text at the top and Fedra Sans Display Black Condensed for the “LONELY AVENUE” title below. The photograph used on the cover was taken by photographer Joel Meyerowitz at a Los Angeles airport in 1976.

[More info on Discogs]

Chowder is a Cartoon Network original series created by C.H. Greenblatt, originally a writer for SpongeBob SquarePants and the Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy. From Wikipedia:

The series follows an aspiring young boy named Chowder and his day-to-day adventures as an apprentice in Chef Mung Daal's catering company. Although he means well, Chowder often finds himself in predicaments due to his perpetual appetite and his nature as a scatterbrain. Chowder's guidance in his goal to become a master chef is influenced by Mung's wife, Truffles; Mung's assistant Shnitzel; Mung's rival Ms. Endive; her apprentice Panini, who has a perpetual crush on Chowder; as well as other side characters.

The show had one win and two nominations at the Primetime Emmy Awards as well as six nominations at the Annie Awards.

In 2010, Cartoon Network published a series of story books. Shown here is the cover of Book 3, featuring Funny Bone JF and Typography of Coop Heavy. See more volumes from the series in the Internet Archive.

This album with Italian-style music by guitarist Al Caiola (1920–2016) from New Jersey was released in 1960 by Roulette Records. The cover photograph shows the Trevi Fountain in Rome.

The title typeface is a so-called Tuscan, drawn in Switzerland and baptized with a Spanish name: it’s Alex Stocker’s Juanita, shown in the first volume of the Lettera book series from 1954. The accompanying wide slab serif probably has roots in Germany, where it was named Breite Egyptienne (“wide Egyptian”). It later got a name that suggests a perceived Greek look or origin, Hellenic Wide.

[More info on Discogs]

This is the second and last studio album by the Japanese fusion band Space Circus. Tsunehisa Kimura created the artwork cover for the front and back, which is titled Divine Retribution and Earth Fantasy. Both artworks are currently in the collection of the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum.

The album title is set in an extra compressed variant of Helvetica Compressed [edit: or rather Schmalfette Grotesk, see comments], while the band's name is set in Neo Script.

The track titles on the back cover are set in a bold weight of Futura, while the track numbers, song credits, and staff credits are set in Optima. The Japanese sans serif typeface on the bottom left and the serif typeface on the bottom right are Ishii Gothic (石井ゴシック) and Ishii Mincho (石井明朝).

[More info on Discogs]

Dancer’s Delight is an easy listening album recorded by David Carrol and His Orchestra and released with Mercury Records in 1956. Carroll (1913–2008) was a studio arranger and conductor who served as Mercury’s musical director from 1951 to the early 1960s.

His name and the album title are set in caps from Filmotype Wand. The wide slab serif with low contrast was released the year before, in 1955. In 2015, Charles Gibbons made a digital version, adding Cyrillic and Greek characters. Interestingly, “dance album” at the top left uses a related older design which was reissued by Bauer and ATF as Hellenic Wide. Filmotype had an adaptation as “HW”. The names of the instrumental tracks are rendered in caps from Copperplate Gothic Light Extended, a.k.a. CP36.

[More info on Discogs]

Let's Dance featuring Charleston Jitterbug Swing is a 2004 four disc CD box set by Quality Audio, containing various “meticulously remastered” dance songs.

The main two fonts on the front are freebies by Nick Curtis: Anagram, based on lettering by Austin Cooper, and FashionVictim, which is a high-contrast take on Bernhard Fashion. It’s paired with Bodega Sans by Greg Thompson, with its alternate g activated.

The back uses more Bodega Sans plus Hamburger Heaven NF, the latter of which is also by Nick Curtis. The type in a band is set in what looks like Adage Script JF, a version of Morris Fuller Benton’s Adscript, designed by Jason Walcott.

Front

Album and single art for Sean Wolcott’s romantic library record, Love is a Funny Game. Plinc Superstar is used as the primary display typeface while Silver Thread JF is used as a supporting secondary typeface. Futura is used for all other copy, along with the Clockwork Records logo and catalog number.

Single art for the title track on the album

The visual identity for the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (Eesti Kaasaegse Kunsti Muuseum, EKKM) was designed by Indrek Sirkel and Ott Kagovere in 2021. The main elements of the identity system are the logo (always centered) and typeface (Niina by Patrick Zavadskis).

The original logo was designed by Marco Laimre and Dénes Farkas in 2006, using Microsoft’s system font Haettenschweiler. The updated logo by Andree Paat is influenced by Haettenschweiler’s source: Schmalfette Grotesk by Walter Haettenschweiler (1954). Sharp inside corners of the new logo were flattened to aide the embossing or cutting out of physical materials.

EKKM is a self-initiated contemporary art institution, primarily functioning as a public non-profit exhibition space and an unabashedly idiosyncratic art museum. It is founded on an unconventional idea of a contemporary art museum with the aim of exhibiting, collecting, creating and enabling contemporary art, while trying to subvert the established working methods, unwritten rules and methods of exhibition-making, prevalent in the field of art and culture.

Less than two years after the first Lettera compendium was published in Zürich, Schmalfette Grotesk had already reached New York, as evidenced by its appearance on this LP cover designed by Milton Glaser. It is used here for the title and the conductor’s name (though the latter misses an umlaut on the O), while all secondary information is in News Gothic Condensed.

[More info on Discogs]

Vol. 1, May 1968 [More info on Discogs]

In 1968, Reprise Records released a two-volume compilation of greatest hits by Dean Martin (1917–1995). For the first volume, art director Ed Thrasher specified Tempo Black for the title, paired with Futura for the song names. Tempo was Ludlow’s response to Bauer’s Futura. Its Black weight is even heavier than Intertype’s Futura Extra Bold.

For Volume 2, which followed half a year later, he didn’t rehash the design, but came up with a variation: this time the titling face is Filmotype Gem, an extrabold sans with straight-sided rounds. The track list is shown to the left and right of Martin’s portrait, set in Franklin Gothic Extra Condensed.

What unites the two cover designs are the photographic portraits of smiling Dean Martin with his signature bow tie, the color palette with red white and blue, and a typography that uses two sans serifs in all caps.

Vol. 2, Aug. 1968 [More info on Discogs]

September of My Years is a 1965 album from vocalist Frank Sinatra, released on Reprise Records.

On both the front and back cover, the artist name and title are set in Post Condensed. The arranger and conductor credit and song titles on the front cover are set in News Gothic, as are the track listing (featuring the Condensed), credits, and Stan Cornyn’s liner notes on the back cover. The “Stereo” text on the front cover is Hellenic Wide. Art direction by Ed Thrasher, with an illustration by George Bartell.

[More info on Discogs]

Poster design by P+A / Showtime Creative

Yellowjackets is an American thriller drama about high school girls’ soccer players who try to survive after their plane crashes in the northern wilderness. The series premiered on Showtime on November 14, 2021.

The font used for the logo is Corner Store JF with some manual edits, including elongated descenders in j and Y, the latter forming an underscore. Corner Store is a handwriting font with strong vintage vibe, made by American artist and typeface designer Jason Walcott. It was released in 2007 by Jukebox Type.

The accompanying sans serifs are Showtime’s standard brand typefaces, Atyp and Antique Legacy.

Poster design by AV Print / Showtime Creative

Poster design by ARSONAL / Showtime Creative

Ahmad Jamal at the Blackhawk features live recordings of jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal, performing at The Blackhawk, San Francisco. The album was released in 1962 by Argo, a jazz-focused sublabel of Chess Records. The album title is set in Stop.

Ahmad Jamal— jazz pianist, composer, bandleader, and educator — died this week, aged 92.

[More info on Discogs]

In 1961, Japanese designer Yūsaku Kamekura (1915–1997) created the first (above) of a triptych of posters in anticipation of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. The following year saw the release of the “Runners” one, while the “Swimmer” poster appeared in 1963. All three used Walter Haettenschweiler’s Schmalfette Grotesk and, according to historian Satoshi Shimizu, were supposed to be displayed together as a whole sequence with the first one in the middle (see bottom picture).

Source: www.ebay.com 1life2go. License: All Rights Reserved.

Front cover

Boots is the debut studio album by Nancy Sinatra (b. 1940), released by Reprise Records on March 15, 1966. Arranged and conducted by Billy Strange, the album was produced by Lee Hazlewood. It includes cover versions of songs by Bob Dylan (“It Ain't Me Babe”), The Beatles (“Day Tripper”, “Run for Your Life”), The Rolling Stones (“As Tears Go By”), and others, alongside three songs written by Hazlewood, including “So Long, Babe” and the smash hit “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’”.

For the cover typography, art director Ed Thrasher chose Cooper Black. First released in 1922, the chubby face was far from a mid-life crisis at 44. In fact, it had quite a moment in 1966: in addition to this album, Cooper Black also appeared on records by The Beach Boys, Simon & Garfunkel, The Who, and Frank Zappa’s The Mothers of Invention.

On the back cover, Thrasher’s black-and-white photography and Walter Haettenschweiler’s Schmalfette Grotesk make for a supercool 1960s look.

[More info on Discogs]

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

Back cover

Source: www.ebay.com egtrader. License: All Rights Reserved.

Stereo release

Julia Fletcher designed three recent show posters for the band Sextile that feature three fonts from my Megafonts series, Megazoid, Megascope, and Megavolt.

In the San Francisco poster, Acumin, Benny One (Castcraft’s copy of Stan Control), Hellenic Wide, and Automania make appearances in supporting text. She also gave Megazoid a colorful bevel that I would love to add to the typeface itself. (Fletcher has previously customized Megazoid to great effect.)

The more recent New York poster deploys Acumin and Automania as well, adding a bit of Fake Receipt for good measure. The Brooklyn poster from 2022 uses Benny One, Automania, and Berlin Bold.

I appreciate that Fletcher is unafraid to stretch type, and manages to do it in a way that feels of a piece with the warping and stretching of two-dimensional space that is happening in the layouts.