The L-1011 TriStar was an early American wide-body, trijet civil passenger airliner designed and manufactured by Lockheed Corporation. Introduced in 1972 with launch customers Eastern Airlines and Trans World Airlines (TWA), the L-1011 was produced until 1983 and flown by major carriers around the world through the 1990s.

Shown here in manufacturer livery, the empennage uses Motter Tektura (with custom capitals) to indicate the marketing name of the aircraft. A bold Eurostile marks the manufacturer and model number on the fuselage (and probably the smaller registration indication, as well).

Issue no. 2 from July 1981. The white text at the bottom is an unidentified typeface similar to Futura Extra Bold Condensed. I wonder if it’s related to Heraldus. [edit: identified by Bryson as Tempo Black Condensed]

Motter Tektura is the logo typeface for Your Computer. The Australian monthly home computing magazine “for business and pleasure” ran from May/June 1981 to May/June 1997. From 1977 to 1984, Othmar Motter’s typeface was also used for the logo of the Apple Computer Inc., likewise in all-lowercase letters.

Initially edited by Les Bell and published by the White House Publishing Group under licence from Motorword Pty Ltd., Your Computer was typeset by Hughes Phototype, Mosman. and printed by The Lithgo Centre, Waterloo. Barry Brady served as the magazine’s first art director. In 1982, he was superseded by Michelle Mabbott. Rolf Hagenmaier filled this role in 1993.

By 1994, the logo had been redrawn (almost) beyond recognition.

You can browse many digitized issues in the Internet Archive.

Motter Tektura was also used as headline typeface on interior pages. Here’s the table of contents from no. 5, November 1981.

June 1982, with ITC Korinna in a starburst for the “Big Birthday Issue”. The logo got a contour.

October 1982, ft. Dynamo Shadow for “16 Bits – A Revolution?”

May 1983

June 1983

September 1983

“Learning With Your Computer” special issue, 1986, with a shaded logo version and ITC Avant Garde Gothic

February 1993. The claim below the logo now reads “Making your micro work”.

Fonts from the Flea Market 1358

I Cugini di Campagna (“The cousins from Campagna”) are an Italian pop band, formed in Rome in 1970. For the sleeve of their 1975 single “Preghiera” (“Prayer”), the four members got dressed in tight black leather and brought a chain and a – hopefully stuffed – bird of prey to the photo shoot. The badass typeface to go with this look is Motter Ombra. Note the r and a bumping fists.

[More info on Discogs]

This purely typographic sleeve features letterforms drawn by four masters of 1970s display type: “Tommy Brown” is Design Sparkly, a thick-thin-thin multline variant of Churchward Design by Joseph Churchward. The song title is set in all-lowercase Motter Ombra by Othmar Motter. Last but not least, the sans in the middle is ITC Avant Garde Gothic by Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnase.

[More info on Discogs]

Othmar Motter’s Tektura, set tight-not-touching with a fortunate distribution of its ascending and descending glyphs, for an album by Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997), released in 1981 by Folkway Records:

Legendary Beat poet Allen Ginsberg explores the fusion of poetry and music in this rare 1970s recording. Called a “venerated bard of resistance” Ginsberg sought “how the raw mind actually works” through poetry. This collection of fun ditties spouts against capitalism, among other things, and is an amusing and enjoyable listen. Ginsberg accompanies himself with a small hand-pumped harmonium from India, occasionally adding his own guttural rhythms reminiscent of Dadaist sound-poetry (see for example “Put Down Your Cigarette Rag” and “Prayer Blues”), while other songs, such as “Bus Ride Ballad Road to Suva”, echo folk ballads from yesteryear. Ginsberg prefaces each song himself. Liner notes include an introduction from Ginsberg.

[More info on Discogs]

The copy digitized by the Internet Archive has slightly different colors.

In the industrial district next to the train track in Olten, Switzerland, there’s an indoor skate and boulder hall on the second floor of an industrial building. At our visit, it was run by a single person who took care of ticketing, rentals, introductions, a small bar, and the tiny shop in the corner. The note saying that there was no pizza or tarte flambée might have been related to this understaffed situation.

The logo typeface for momentum has been “found on the internet” by one of the operators, Tobias Flotron. It’s Motter Ombra which  has also been applied in big hand-cut wooden letters to one of the walls. Next to this main logo font, the subtitle is Avenir Next Bold Italic. On the ramps are vinyl letters by their producer KÄGIRAMPS & CO. They appear to be from Cairo Black 900, the Arabic version of Titillum that is less fat than its Latin counterpart.

The color coding of the skating area, including the graffiti, is held in orange and black. The orange might have been inspired by metal beams original to the building. It’s the fact that the tone of orange does not quite match which brings me to this conclusion.

Stickers handed to us as first time clients, with a big Motter Ombra m, white on orange.

Entrance counter, bar and small shop at momentum. El Tony, the Swiss mate soft drink, seems to be big in the skater community.

The entrance door, orange on brown, really brings home the look and feel of Motter Ombra.

We did not add our stickers to the window in the staircase, but brought them home with us for better application.

ToneMaster is a brand of audio cassettes made in China. The logo makes use of Motter Tektura (1974). The text on the cassettes and the wrappers is set in a range of standard typefaces like Helvetica, Times New Roman, and ITC Avant Garde Gothic Condensed, in various styles including italics. Specialist website Cassette Comeback mentions 1989 as the estimated year of production. According to Tape Fans, the ToneMaster cassettes were still in production in 2010.

The AOS-100, made by Best Elektronik A.Ş., is a school bell timer/clock made for use in PA-integrated school bells that are used in Turkish public and private schools. It has 23 preset monophonic melodies, with additional functions such as playing the Turkish national anthem (İstiklal Marşı) and bells manually, automatic bell, announcement, holiday setting with one key, holiday mode, announcements, weekly lesson programs, automatic holiday days and a monochrome LCD display.

The device used Donald Handel’s Handel Gothic for information text. The Best logo is based on Othmar Motter’s Motter Tektura.

Variant with MP3 player and USB support

Monpti is short for "mon petit" (my little one), and it’s a nickname for your not-so-secret stash. With Germany's legalization in 2024, we aim to bring a bit more self-assurance, a bit more style, and a bit more happiness to your daily vibe.

Until recently, it was unimaginable to wear an accessory openly celebrating personal cannabis use. Now, it has found its rightful place: freely embraced in living rooms, parks, and most importantly, in the public eye.

The brand typeface chosen for these “smoking essentials for modern stoners” is Motter Ombra, supported by Montserrat on the website.

Poster for the Paolo Nutini concert at Bonus Arena, Hull, in 2022. The name of the Scottish singer-songwriter is set in Motter Ombra and the other texts are set in Powerr’s Semi Bold weight.

This album of folk music from Bhutan was compiled and annotated by Johann S. Szuszkiewicz and published by Folkways Records in their Ethnic Folkways Library in 1978.

Cover designer Ronald Clyne combined two typefaces of contrasting weight which both came out in the 1970s: “Bhutan” is in Motter Tektura (1974), with its descending B and a quadruple underline. The hairline grotesk is the Thin (a.k.a. Ultralight) weight of Helvetica. Issued by the Haas foundry in 1970, it’s even lighter than the Light (or Leicht) from 1966. Linotype’s digital version doesn’t cover this weight, but Neue Helvetica (1982) includes an equivalent as Ultra Light.

[More info on Discogs]

What a difference a mere four years can make: for some reason, Warner Books weren’t happy with the cover design for their paperback edition of A Very Easy Death from 1973 anymore, and commissioned a new one from M. Houner.

Both cover designs show text only, and both use typefaces that were en vogue at the time. But while Benguiat’s opulent swash Caslon was a child of the 1960s and already on its way out of fashion, Motter Ombra was still on the rise in 1977, and would see plenty of use in the 1980s and beyond.

Othmar Motter’s heavyweight with its characteristic semicircle shapes is set with one word per line, playfully arranged so that A and V form a (near-)mirror image. Also, the diagonals of the two y’s were brought into alignment and smoothly flow into the t’s top on the fourth line.

The black text at the bottom isn’t typographic. It looks like it was handwritten and subsequently cut out, for an edgy look.

Undertow is the debut album by Melbourne jazz fusion band Firetail, self-released in April 2024. The cover features artwork by Jamie McElhinney, with design and layout by Hoffman Design.

The band name on the front cover is set in Motter Ombra and supporting text in Futura Now.

The album can be downloaded or purchase on vinyl from their Bandcamp page.

READY FOR IT is a series of animated posters, and a sexual health campaign by The Love Tank (UK):

This year’s kink, fetish, and BDSM festival season, be ready for it with preventable shots for MPOX, HEP A, HEP B, and HPV. Visit queerhealth.info/ready for everything you need to know about these free vaccines and where to get them. By kinksters, for kinksters.

Creative direction and design by Richard Kahwagi
Illustrations and animation by Fetish Doodles

Hubertus Foerster’s German translation of Georges Arnaud/Henri Girard’s Le Salaire de la Peur (The Wages of Fear), the basis of both Henri-Georges Clouzot’s film of the same name and William Friedkin’s Sorceror, published by (East) Berlin’s Verlag Tribüne.

The illustration is by Klaus Vonderwerth and the printing performed by the Grafischer Großbetrieb Völkerfreundschaft Dresden, but no designer is credited. The title and author are set in Maxima, the logotype of the series uses the a from Motter Ombra.

The same illustration was used already in 1979, with different typography. The cover design with Maxima and Ombra was introduced in 1981 (the shown copy is from 1985).

Motter Ombra used in East Germany, exhibit #6:

Das Gebet in der Zitadelle (“Prayer in the citadel”) is a book about travelling the Philippines, published by VEB F.A. Brockhaus in 1978, at a time when most East German citizens couldn’t travel freely, and certainly not to the Philippines. Author Ulrich Makosch (1933–2008) was a journalist and also a long-time secret informer for the Stasi. In December 1977, Erich Honecker had visited Manila and met with Ferdinand Marcos, which led to a bilateral trade agreement between the GDR and the Philippines [VIP].

The roman used for the author’s name and the subtitle is Berthold Baskerville.

Source: altingun.bandcamp.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Gece is the second studio album of Amsterdam’s Anatolian rock band Altın Gün, released in 2019 by GlitterBeat.

Motter Ombra is used on the cover for the name of the band. The title of the album is set in Zipper.

Source: rockers.de License: All Rights Reserved.

Detail from the front cover

Both typefaces can also be found on the vinyl sticker, the compact disc surface, and the back cover of the album. Additional information is written using Helvetica

The layout and design is credited to Frank Maston. The album art is by Marina Tadic, and the photography on the back by Rona Lane.

[More info on Discogs]

Source: rockers.de License: All Rights Reserved.

Back cover

Source: lediscopathe.com Le Discopathe. License: All Rights Reserved.

Vinyl record label

Source: www.deformmuzik.com deformmuzik. License: All Rights Reserved.

Compact disc

Source: midnightcoffee.fr midnightcoffee. License: All Rights Reserved.

Football in the West: for issue 176, ballesterer travels to Vorarlberg and visits the most western Austrian county and its football. They talk to players, officials and ultras, see mountains, valleys and derbys. Beyond the cover stories they say farewell to Pele, talk to Sturm Graz president Christian Jauk, marvel over Moroccan grounds, Bilbao supporters, and much more. The display typeface chosen for this issue is Motter Ombra by Othmar Motter of Vorarlberger Grafik.

Bratislava Jazz Days was “founded in 1975 by amateur jazz enthusiasts, most notably Peter Lipa, and later developed into a festival attended by world-class jazz players.” [Wikipedia] In addition to Czech and Slovak artists, the lineup of the 1980 edition included musicians from Poland, Hungary Great Britain, East Germany, the Soviet Union, Switzerland, Bulgaria, and France.

In the first years, Slovak designer Ján Meisner did the covers for the double LP series with live recordings from the festival performances. For the 1980 release, he showed an erupting metronome volcano. The name is in Motter Tektura, framed by a line that extends from the letterforms.

[More info on Discogs]

Speno EMD F40PH-2M No. 101, Coquitlam, British Columbia, 20 Sep. 1987

A very large application of Motter Tektura on the side of Speno’s locomotives. Speno is a rail service company specializing in grinding, measuring, and inspection of rail tracks. Looking at other photos of Speno equipment, the earliest occurrence of this logo is from 1982. Don Ross has more information about the company and their machinery. Speno is still in business, but they don’t use Motter Tektura anymore, which is a shame.

Speno RMS-1, Pittsburgh, PA, 6 March 1983

Speno RMS-109, Syracuse, NY, 1983

Speno 201, Nov. 1985