ITC Zapf Chancery in use

Integrity album art and logotype (1989–1995)

Rafael Nascimento — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 12:47:26 +0000

Contributed by Rafael Nascimento

License: All Rights Reserved.

Band logo

Logotype and assorted album covers and merchandise for the hardcore punk pioneers Integrity.

The band has been active since 1988. Formed in Cleveland, Ohio, it’s based in Belgium since 2003. A few logo versions have been used over the years, this one being the most recognizable. It is made using the uppercase letters of Lzh1, designed by Lizabeth Brenner and released by Chartpak for dry transfer lettering in 1986 as a winner in a type design competition held at the time. The band identity and the zine Schism (2005) share this common typographic background and are among the few known uses of the typeface.

Further inspection revealed that a non-official digital version of the font named Radical was available in the early 1990s through Silver Graphics, though both Lzh1 and Radical are discontinued.

Out of curiosity brought by the investigation of an analog source and band fandom, I have released a new and improved digital version of the typeface, available as INTEGRITY.

“Harder They Fall” was originally self-released in 1989 as a single-sided demo cassette tape, already featuring Lzh1. [More info on Discogs] Shown here is the 2019 anniversary reissue on Backbite Records.

Cover of the 2011 reissue of “Harder They Fall” on Organized Crime Records. Credits are added in ITC Zapf Chancery. [More info on Discogs]

In Contrast of Sin, Victory Records, 1990. The band name here is set in Thor, fetauring the alternate Y. Design by Dwid Hellion. [More info on Discogs]

Systems Overload, Victory Records, 1995. Lzh1 (or Radical) is here used in lowercase letters, too. Design by Markus Greiner. [More info on Discogs]

Systems Overload T-shirt

This post was originally published at Fonts In Use

Himayant Herbal product labels and promotional leaflets

Anirban Mitra — Thu, 02 Jan 2025 01:31:00 +0000

Contributed by Anirban Mitra

Anirban Mitra. License: All Rights Reserved.

Himayant Herbal OPC Pvt Ltd is a company based in Purba Bardhaman, West Bengal, India, offering herbal supplements. The fonts used in creating product labels and promotional material include URW’s Z003 (a libre version of ITC Zapf Chancery), DejaVu Serif, ITC Avant Garde Gothic Book BT, Caladea, Carlito, Ubuntu, MathJax Calligraphic, Helvetica, Liberation Sans, Arial, and Century Gothic.

Anirban Mitra. License: All Rights Reserved.

Anirban Mitra. License: All Rights Reserved.

This post was originally published at Fonts In Use

Metra tickets, 1990–1991

Florian Hardwig — Sun, 17 Sep 2023 14:50:00 +0000

Contributed by Florian Hardwig

January 1990, ft. an unidentified rounded sans

February 1990 ft. Italia Bold

C82 is the website of Nicholas Rougeux, a Chicago-based designer and data artist. One of the many great things one can find on C82 is his collection of train tickets sold by Metra. Every month, the commuter rail system in the Chicago metropolitan area releases a new ticket design. In 2004, Nick started collecting. Over the years, and with the help from other ephemera enthusiasts as well as of Metra, the archive considerably grew in size. At the time of writing, it includes an impressive 1,395 tickets, spanning more than fifty years of commuter history.

This post highlights the monthly tickets from 1990 and 1991. In a recent blog update, Nick comments:

In the early 90s, ticket designs varied significantly with new typography and visual styles appearing each month. I can’t say these are some of my favorites but I recognize that this may have been in an effort to curb counterfeiting. However, I do enjoy some of the typography from the 1990s tickets. I owe a big thanks to fellow collector John for these and others.

Each of the tickets features a different typeface. Many of the chosen fonts stem from the libraries of ITC (Korinna, Quorum, Serif Gothic, Zapf Chancery, …) and Letraset (Caxton, Italia, Romic (Letraset), …). There are also classics that go back to the era of foundry type, like Beton, City, or Optima, and Monotype originals like Albertus and Plantin. The typographic smorgasbord is completed by designs as diverse as Moderne Schwabacher, a turn-of-the-century blackletter; Salut, an upright script first cast by Gebr. Klingspor in the 1930s; and Checkmate, a futuristic sans with chamfered corners, dreamt up at Schaedler in the 1970s – all of which were either used still as phototype, or in the form of early digitizations.

For the year 1990, all abbreviated month names are shown in vertically stretched letterforms. The source of the stacked numerals (“90”) was identified by Quinn as City Bold, see comments. The bitmap caps (“D/A”) are likely custom. While the spelled-out month names and the ticket numbers are similar to OCR-B, the specific font appears to be a proprietary design with some differences, probably from a specialized printing machine.

The Metra logo seen on the depicted train as well as on some of the tickets is Crillee. See also the dedicated post about it.

March 1990 ft. Macbeth

April 1990 ft. City Bold

May 1990 ft. Checkmate

June 1990 ft. Roberta

July 1990 ft. what appears to be a version of Filmotype Amber (or a similar face)

August 1990 ft. Salut

September 1990 ft. Moderne Schwabacher a.k.a. Chalet Text

October 1990 ft. Clarendon Condensed

November 1990 ft. Beton Bold Condensed

January 1991 ft. ITC Quorum Bold

February 1991 ft. ITC Kabel Ultra

March 1991 ft. ITC Serif Gothic Heavy with the pointed forms for M and A that were omitted from the digital version. “March 1991” uses ITC Korinna and Times New Roman.

April 1991 ft. a bold variant of Plantin

May 1991 ft. a bold variant of Albertus

June 1991 ft. Caxton Bold

July 1991 ft. Optima Bold

August ft. ITC Cheltenham Bold

September 1991 ft. ITC Zapf Chancery Bold with the alternate swash caps

October 1991 ft. a bold variant of Century Oldstyle

November 1991 ft. Romic (Letraset) Bold

December 1991 ft. ITC Berkeley Oldstyle

This post was originally published at Fonts In Use

Richard Mazda – Hands of Fate album art

Bryson Stohr — Sat, 20 May 2023 10:36:39 +0000

Contributed by Bryson Stohr

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

Front and back cover for Richard Mazda’s Hands of Fate album, which was released in 1983 by I.R.S. Records.

While the author’s first name isn’t too out of the ordinary, being set in the bold italic style of ITC Zapf Chancery, the same can't be said for the typographic “main attraction”; it’s a pre-digital film typeface that’s called Sarah Elizabeth by Solotype. It has several digitizations, including Doug Olena’s Burrito, B. Haber’s Taco Salad (with small caps), WSI’s Hot Tamale, and (probably most successfully of all) Image Club’s Fajita. It’s used here in all caps.

[More info on Discogs]

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

This post was originally published at Fonts In Use

The Secret of St. Brides text adventure game by The Games Mistresses

D Jones — Tue, 08 Jun 2021 10:20:39 +0000

Contributed by D Jones

Source: mocagh.org Museum of Computer Adventure Game History. License: All Rights Reserved.

Cassette inlay for the 1985 text adventure game The Secret of St. Brides.

The Games Mistresses were a somewhat secretive games studio operating out of St. Bride’s, a boutique holiday destination that allowed adults to experience life as a 1920s boarding-school pupil. Their games were published in the 1980s and they specialised in text adventures. Aaron A. Reed has an intriguing write-up in a blog post published in June 2021.

The first title is The Secret of St. Brides, produced for the ZX Spectrum. It uses Binner for the title on the cassette inlay and the cassette itself. Other typefaces used for the inlay are Broadway Engraved (“The St. Bride’s”), Gallia (“Adventure Guide”), Volta (“Watch out for …”), Grotesque No. 9 (“Raffles” etc.), and ITC Zapf Chancery (“Setting Out …”). All of these faces were available from Letraset for dry transfer lettering at the time. The body copy is set in Times, and “Distributed by Audiogenic Software Ltd.” in Helvetica Bold. The ISBN and barcode numbers are from OCR-A and OCR-B, respectively. “48K Spectrum” appears to be hand-written lettering.

The racy advert shown at the end of this post uses a quote, St. O’Trinians, set in Broadway Engraved for the title. The quote itself is a sort of pun playing on St. Trinians and the Mistresses’ home country of Ireland. The body text of the advert is one of the commercially popular sans-serif typefaces, probably Helvetica.

Cassette label for The Secret of St. Brides.

Magazine advert for The Secret of St. Bride’s [sic].

This post was originally published at Fonts In Use

Kate Bush – Hounds of Love album art

D Jones — Sat, 17 Apr 2021 20:22:58 +0000

Contributed by D Jones

License: All Rights Reserved.

Sleeve for the 1985 Kate Bush album Hounds of Love.

Hounds of Love marked Kate Bush’s return to form and popular success. The album placed very highly in the charts, and produced several hit singles; it went on to sell more than a million copies wordwide, and regularly features in various all-time-best lists.

For the cover design, Bill Smith Studio paired a photograph taken by John Carder Bush (the artist’s brother) with ITC Zapf Chancery (1979).

[More info on Discogs]

This post was originally published at Fonts In Use

Transport Beau trucks

Aidan Nester — Wed, 03 Oct 2018 07:13:00 +0000

Contributed by Aidan Nester

Source: www.wsi-collectors.com License: All Rights Reserved.

WSI Models’ miniature version (Scale 1:50) of Beau’s NextGen Scania S500 with Assassin’s Creed as its theme. [Iepieleaks]

French transport company Beau is known for their trucks decorated with airbrush art. The word Beau usually is modeled after the Balloon typeface, with a yellow-to-orange gradient and often a white outline around the letters. The names of the owners — Chantal, Philippe and Romuald Beau — are shown in the Brush Script typeface. The initials in the eagle silhouette are from Zapf Chancery.

Ghost Rider-themed DAF 95 XF, spotted in ca. 2013.

Scania-R Topline with an Iron Man-themed tractor, spotted in ca. 2011.

Miniature replica made by nationale20 in 2010.

Miniature replica made by nationale20 in 2010. See the original truck in BonsaiTruck’s Flickr stream.

This post was originally published at Fonts In Use

Döring’s Gemüse-Eck

Mon, 10 Apr 2017 19:08:00 +0000

Photo(s) by Felix M on Flickr.

Source: www.flickr.com Uploaded to Flickr by Felix M and tagged with “itczapfchancery” and “zapfchancery”. License: All Rights Reserved.

“Not only the quotes are ‘dumb’, they are also unnecessary.” — Albert-Jan Pool

This post was originally published at Fonts In Use

Boca Breeze newsletters in Seinfeld

Jargon Scott — Sat, 13 Dec 2014 12:15:05 +0000

In the Seinfeld episode “The Wizard” (February 26, 1998), Kramer retires to Floria and runs for president of Jerry’s parents’ condominium association. A series of newsletters shows how close Kramer comes to winning the election, nearly opening the door for Jerry’s deposed father to wield power from behind the scenes.

The headlines are set in Helvetica Extra Compressed; the nameplate is in ITC Zapf Chancery.

Seinfeld creator Larry David, according to the minor headlines in Futura Condensed Oblique, went from hole-in-one golfer to premature retirement over the span of the three split-second font pages.

Library Way, New York City

Laurence Penney — Wed, 22 Oct 2014 07:45:20 +0000

Contributed by Laurence Penney

Library Way, sometimes called Library Walk, is a series of bronze panels, each featuring a literary quotation, laid into the pavement of E 41st St, Manhattan. This is the street that leads to the imposing front entrance of New York Public Library. The 96 panels are by Greenwich Village “urban sculptural artist”, Gregg LeFevre, and date from 1998.

The quotations themselves seem to have gone down well with the public and various critics, and I wouldn’t want to criticise the choices. Yet, while some of the graphical concepts in the panels are pretty good, indeed one could imagine these pieces as workable early drafts, they are almost all severely let down by poor execution. The typographic aspects in particular deserve stark criticism.

Here are seven that caught my eye last August:

Francis Bacon (top) — We’re off to a bad start with Times New Roman, not suitable for the 16th century, then we cringe at the fake perspective on the spine, with an actual typo in the spacing of the hyphen (which, incidentally, should have been a longer dash). Finally we come to the title of the book, inexplicably in quotation marks (predictably straight), and also italicized (unlike the author) which further confuses the 3D effect. Regarding the bite marks, one wonders if they are deliberately angled so as to avoid the need to draw them in three dimensions.

Ernest Hemingway — Nice typewriter and stool … in Courier, hmm, ok, but with proportional justification?

Alfred Kazin — The lighting effect is promising, but the perspective distorts the text in a strange way (notice how the “restless … into” line starts off with wide letters and ends slightly condensed), and why switch to another typeface for the credit?

Henry David Thoreau — Brush Script and Helvetica, really? The coins are very effective in this piece, and I love how they breach the edge of the panel, but I question whether a few dozen coins on the ground successfully represents “the treasured wealth of the world”.

Richard Eberhart — What a shame to ruin a glorious ceiling with cheaply condensed Times!

Lewis Carroll — Straight quotes galore, aaargh!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow — Except for the small line in Helvetica, this is really rather nice; the irregular style and arrangement of the spines are very attractive.

The panel on José Martí, not seen by me last August, deserves particular censure not just for awful spacing, use of straight quotes, and terrible typeface choice for book spines (Chicago for a 1969 work of Native American literature …), but there’s a damn typo in John Maynard Keynes. This is one of 44 photos of the plaques in this set on Flickr.

Title panel (top) — Those pages look like quick Bézier constructions, reflected and duplicated. The page block of a real book does not have that thinness in the middle. The book is inexplicably unbound.

Of course, it’s not at all uncommon for public art and architecture to have minor or peripheral typographic aspects that are badly executed, and thus to provoke disappointed mutterings from specialists in forums such as Fonts In Use. The Library Way series, though, is typographic to its very core, and it’s no exaggeration to say that the artist has been grossly negligent. Furthermore, the critics in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Huffington Post deserve extra censure for their fawning reviews, that demonstrate a blindness to the most glaring typographical ineptitude.

Laurence Penney is a consultant in font technology and font marketing, based in Bristol, England. In 1999 he became part of the initial MyFonts.com team, and helped create the site’s unique balance between “newbie appeal” and an extensive typographic resource. He now develops in-house software, contributes editorial content, and co-manages the distributor’s contacts with foundries and designers.

This post was originally published at Fonts In Use

Tomorrowland signs at Disneyland Park and Magic Kingdom

Stephen Coles — Thu, 02 Jan 2014 07:20:17 +0000

Disneyland Park, CA

Photo by Stephen Coles, 2011. License: CC BY-NC.

Disneyland Park, CA

Photo by Stephen Coles, 2011. License: CC BY-NC.

Disneyland Park, CA

Magic Kingdom, FL

ITC Anna for the bathroom signs. The font’s ‘M’ and ‘U’ are rotated for ‘W’ and ‘N’ to keep the look more rounded than sharp and pointy.

Source: www.flickr.com Photo by Joe Penniston, 2008. License: CC BY-NC-ND.

Magic Kingdom, FL

This post was originally published at Fonts In Use