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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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.

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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.

An odd face for Odd Jobs: Motter Ombra supported by a gradient of Burko Super-Duper

From the inner flap:

Odd Jobs offers and intriguing look at the working world of con men, extortionists, pimps, prostitutes, strippers, and others who inhabit the “underworld” of work.

The book was written by Gale Miller, then Assistant Professor of Sociology at Marquette University.

Title page, featuring Shotgun in Blanks (outline) and Regular styles.

Table of contents.

Table of contents, with what probably is the largest amount of Shotgun on one page ever.

Preface.

Introduction. Chapter numbers are written out in Shotgun Blanks, and integrated into the text block.

Chapter opening.

SaverSeven, the weekly ticket to travel on buses and trains within Greater Manchester was first introduced in 1975, they lasted until around circa 1993 (but open to correction).

Motter Ombra was the font of choice for its logo and the GMT’s standard Helvetica was used for everything else.

A fine addition to my humble but growing collection of Motter Ombra used in East Germany:

Spielbox is a compendium of six games produced by VEB Piko in Sonneberg, probably in the mid-1980s. Othmar Motter’s display masterpiece is used in lowercase letters for the name, with a die in place of the i dot.

The Thuringian town of Sonneberg is known “as a center of toy production and was dubbed the ‘toy capital of the world’ in the 1920s.”

Package for “Csokoládés vaníliás karika” (“chocolate vanilla rings”) from the 1980s.

The vanilla ring is a classic Hungarian biscuit. The bottom of the vanilla biscuit is dipped in a cocoa coating, the shape is round with a hole in the middle, hence the name.

Emil Horváth is credited with inventing the vanilla ring, based on a recipe for a tea cake, the vanilla bun. The production of the biscuits started in 1963 with the help of leftover machinery from the predecessor of Győri Keksz Kft., the Koestlin factory. Named after the vanilla bun on which the dough is based, it was first marketed as a chocolate vanilla ring.

For many years, the vanilla ring was made in the factory in Győrsziget, but Mondelēz International, which bought Győr Biscuits, now markets it in Hungary as Pilóta vanilla ring, and it is made in the Székesfehérvár confectionery factory.

“Koukej, se mnou si píseň broukej” / “Hádej, mámo” sleeve (front).

The song “Koukej, se mnou si píseň broukej” (“Look, Hum The Song With Me”) has already been touched upon by me at the font use entry about the Valérie Čižmárová ‎singles (Supraphon, 1973/1975) and self-titled album (Supraphon, 1975). It was the closing part of the opening track on the album, “Směs písní” (“Medley”). The story behind why that song appeared on that album is as follows.

At the Bratislavská Lýra Festival of 1973, Petra Černocká was due to perform “Koukej, se mnou si píseň broukej”, for which she had composed both the music and lyrics. However, she was taken ill in the immediate run-up to the festival, so Valérie Čižmárová was called in as an understudy to perform the song on Petra Černocká's behalf, narrowly missing out on a “podium finish”, coming fourth.

In recognition of this event it was decided that “Koukej, se mnou si píseň broukej” would be the last of four “oldies” associated with Valérie Čižmárová for the opening track, preceded by first her cover of The Sweet’s “Co-Co”, “Koko”, then by her cover of Giorgio Moroder’s “Looky, Looky”, “Léta letí” (“Time Flies”) and finally by her cover of Bobby Hebb’s “Sunny” her debut single. However, Petra had herself at least managed to record a studio version of “Koukej, se mnou si píseň broukej” in 1973, backed up by “Hádej, mámo” (“Take A Guess, Mum”), a cover of the Soulful Dynamics’ “Coconuts From Congoville”, released by Supraphon Records as No. 0 43 1536 h.

Petra Černocká was born on 24th November 1949 in Prague and at the time of the recording of “Koukej, se mnou si píseň broukej” / “Hádej, mámo” she would probably have been best-known for her both having sung the theme of and having starred, as Saxana, the teenage witch, in the 1971 film directed by Václav Vorlíček, Dívka na koštěti (“Girl On A Broomstick”).

Her name on the front and rear of the sleeve appears in Motter Ombra with custom diacritics. On the front her surname is divided into three lines and on the rear her first name appears rotated 90 degrees anti-clockwise. The song titles would appear to be in Maršův Grotesk, where the aforementioned Valérie Čižmárová is one of the two pre-existing font use entries for the font. The credits for, respectively, the photography and sleeve design are Vlastislav Macháček and Jiří Pavlín.

“Koukej, se mnou si píseň broukej” / “Hádej, mámo” sleeve (rear).

“Stay Around” is the debut single by Berlin-based Swiss indie folk artist Lena Minder.

The cover artwork draws its inspiration from early 70s German cosmic music records and uses a heavily edited original photograph by Victoria Byt portraying the singer. The song’s title is set in Motter Ombra while the artist name is kept in Kabel Light, with all typography being set in lowercase only.

All-lowercase Motter Ombra, with initial and final letters that were hyper-extended to form a frame around the four featured photographs, for a poster advertising Poseidon.

First issued under this name in 1962, Poseidon was a magazine about all things maritime. In addition to sailing, diving, underwater photography or sealife, this also included naval ships. After all, it was published by the Militärverlag der DDR, the military publishing house of the GDR.

The logo on the magazine itself never used Motter Ombra. In 1978, shortly after this poster was made, a new design featuring Antique Olive was introduced. For more facts and images, see poseidon-archiv.de, a dedicated website maintained by Marko Wargulski.

Cover of Poseidon No. 202 from 1979, ft. Antique Olive for logo and number. The small text is in Monotype Grotesque.

Five of the six issues from 1979. For some reason, “203” is in Gill Sans instead of Antique Olive.

Source: futuress.org Image: A History of Arab Graphic Design. License: All Rights Reserved.

The Alexandria Biennale for Mediterranean Countries was founded in 1955, making Egypt the first African country to use the art biennial format as a political tool for national promotion. This catalog cover for the 16th Alexandria Biennale in 1987 was designed by Miriam Abdel Aleem, one of four women featured in the new book, A History of Arab Graphic Design by Bahia Shehab and Haytham Nawar. The authors presented much of the work from their book in a Letterform Archive lecture on January 26, 2021 and the recording should be posted online soon.

Photo: Stephen Coles. License: All Rights Reserved.

Aleem’s cover lettering compared to Motter Ombra (digital version used).

This is a dual cover with both Arabic and Latin sides. (Perhaps the catalog’s interior also reflects that duality, with Arabic content reading left-to-right, and Latin right-to-left.) The Latin title appears to be based on Othmar Motter’s Motter Ombra, but there are many differences, indicating that Aleem created original lettering based on the typeface rather than applying Letraset or phototype. The ‘B’ and ‘D’ were flipped vertically, the ‘n’ and ‘x’ were reinvented, and the ‘i’ and punctuation appear to come from other models.

Whatever criticisms one could make of the lettering execution, it’s fascinating to see how Aleem emulated Motter Ombra for the Arabic title. The entire composition, incorporating a mirrored illustration, makes for a striking cover.