Fact magazine covers

10 Comments on “Fact magazine covers”

1. Zane Goldsbrough says:

   Jun 6th, 2017 6:56 am

   Wow this very factually helpful lol. Thanks for posting these designs. Please keep posting (Y) great content

2. Humberto Gillan says:

   Jul 22nd, 2017 5:21 pm

   The cover of the obesity looks like if had an early “bottleneck” appearence. Take a look to that font that supossedly was designed in 1972, but this look way too similar.

3. Stephen Coles says:

   Jul 23rd, 2017 7:19 am

   Humberto, we do state on the Bottleneck typeface description:

   Designed in 1972 for Letraset, likely inspired by the success of Chwast Art Tone, and most similar to the latter’s Boot Black style.

   But it’s true there are elements of the “Obesity” lettering that are more like Bottleneck than Art Tone. It would be interesting to know more about the origin of Bottleneck.

   

   

4. Humberto Gillan says:

   Aug 2nd, 2017 4:15 am

   Yeah, Stephen, it supossed that Tony Wenman designed Bottleneck in 1972 for Letraset, but this looks way too similar:

   

   Maybe it was the main inspiration for Bottleneck.

5. Jorge Iván Moreno Majul says:

   Sep 5th, 2020 6:34 am

   Jerome Snyder is credited as a guest illustrator and the issue is dated July–August 1965 (Volume 2, Issue 4): fact.110west40th.com/volume…, years later (c. 1967) he wrote The Underground Gourmet with Milton Glaser as co-author, with a cover using Chwast Art Tone https://www.miltonglaser.com/the-work/c:books-and-magazines/374/the-underground-gourmet-cover/
   
   Maybe Lubalin took the idea to Wenman or maybe is just a coincidence, I really would like to know.

6. Florian Hardwig says:

   Sep 5th, 2020 8:44 am

   Iván, were you able to get in touch with Wenman; is he still around?

   Lubalin was a member of the panel that selected the faces for the Letragraphica range initiated by Letraset in 1970. In this function, would he have suggested ideas for typefaces to Letraset’s type design team? Or would he have kept rather for his own ventures, LSC and later ITC? The first issues of Letragraphica contained typefaces by Lubalin, like ITC Avant Garde Gothic.

   One thing’s for sure: Letraset in the UK kept a close eye on trends in lettering styles, including faces that emerged at Photo-Lettering, Inc. in NYC. Two other, more obvious examples are Candice (1976) vs. Benguiat Charisma Script (before 1971, see comparison) and Lazybones (1972) vs. Cooper Nouveau Swash 10, ca. 1965, see comparison). Such “inspiration” was not a one-way street: PLINC’s British Inserat is a copy of Letraset’s first original, Compacta. Keep in mind that, unlike the vast majority of digital fonts today, the offerings by these two companies were not direct competitors. Photo-Lettering as a NYC-based typesetting studio and Letraset as a producer of dry-transfer sheets were in different markets. As an end user, you couldn’t buy (or license) a PLINC typeface. Instead, you could order a setting from them, and even that was largely limited to local clients.

7. Jorge Iván Moreno Majul says:

   Sep 22nd, 2020 2:43 pm

   Thanks, Florian, I wrote to Mike Daines and he told me this (just today):

   I recruited Tony into the Letraset studio in 1970. At the time we were building up a design department at the Letraset factory in Ashford, Kent, south of London. At the time I was the studio manager. I think Tony was 24 then, so would be 73 now. He came from an advertising agency background, although he expressed an interest in lettering. He soon wanted to get into the Letraset publicity department. His idea for Stripes came from his thinking that, using Letraset transfer sheets, the design could be applied in several different ways. He promoted his idea within the studio by creating a mock-up of the Letraset catalogue cover using Stripes, an idea that was eventually used by Letraset USA.

   After having designed types within the studio for about two years, Tony got his transfer to the Letraset publicity department in London, I think in 1974. He worked there on some advertising material and was involved in the production of a film “Type in Society”, to promote Letraset’s place in typography.

   I left Letraset in 1974, but returned in 1979 to manage Letraset’s type business. By that time Tony had left the company. I found out that he had moved to Greece and had set up a surfing school business. I haven’t seen him since then, although I heard that he had come back to the UK. He didn’t pursue any further interest in type or lettering as far as I know.

   So now we can estimate a date of birth at around the year 1947 and that he designed Bottleneck, Buster, Camellia and Stripes at age 26–27, which is very impressive.
   
   And then we know he likes waves, I always though of Stripes as the flowing of water in rivers, I think he would like to know of the greek range extension in Octothorpe, although we now know a lot more about this origins and work at Letraset, there’s not much about his current location.

8. Florian Hardwig says:

   Sep 22nd, 2020 7:48 pm

   Oh, smashing! Thanks for digging deeper and for sharing the info provided by Mike Daines here, Iván. From typeface designer to surfing instructor – that’s quite something.

   Mr. Wenman, if you should come across these comments, please say hello. We’d love to hear from you. And thanks for your typeface designs!

9. Bryson Stohr says:

   Oct 3rd, 2022 1:01 pm

   The “A gourmet says” portion appears to be set in the Extra Condensed width of News Gothic, which looks very similar to Record Gothic Extra Condensed.

10. Florian Hardwig says:

    Oct 3rd, 2022 4:52 pm

    Looks good to me! Added.