Dune book series, New English Library
Late ’70s, early ’80s covers for Frank Herbert’s Dune series. Cover art by Bruce Pennington. Books published by New English Library Books.
There are a ton of different editions of the Dune series, as you can see on arrakis.co.uk. I really like the Hebrew and Brazilian editions, but my favorites are four UK covers illustrated by Bruce Pennington.
The titles of the books are set in Giorgio. Giorgio is like a psychedelic slab serif. The tagline text has been set in Monotype Grotesque.
Collage with dozens of different versions of Dune. The type has been set in so many different ways. Titles can be seen set in a yet unidentified typeface (or is it lettering?) digitized as Orthodox Herbertarian, Desdemona aka Quaint, Revue, Rubens, Plantin, Alpha Midnight, Avant Garde Gothic, Kabel Black, Albertus, Engravers, Trajan, Techno and many more.
5 Comments on “Dune book series, New English Library”
The specific covers you show in this post might very well be from the late 1970s and early 1980s, as you mention. However, New English Library introduced this basic design with Bob Pennington’s art and Giorgio (but with a different secondary typeface) already in 1968, see the information at the ISFDB.
Today we published a batch of Dune-themed posts, several of which feature designs shown in the collage at the end. The unidentified typeface that was digitized as Orthodox Herbertarian is called Davison Art Nouveau, see the Mystery of the Dune Font:
See some cool explorations around Giorgio by José Solé on Instagram.
Related: Adrian Frutiger’s 1970s logo for Tissages Normands Réunis
Also: Lucky, designed by André Pless, another Paris-based designer, around the same time.
The aforementioned explorations by JM Solé have led to a typeface named Oobleck. A first version was released via Future Fonts.