True West by Sam Shepard (Nelson Doubleday, 1982)
Contributed by Florian Hardwig on Jul 31st, 2017. Artwork published in
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Sam Shepard’s True West was first performed at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco, where Shepard was the resident playwright. It had its world premiere there on July 10, 1980. First published in book form in 1981 by Samuel French, this is the jacket of Nelson Doubleday’s edition from 1982, designed by Laurene Femister-Muller with art direction from Jeanette Portelli.
The typeface is Photo-Lettering’s Fiorello Condensed, with a rotated ‘m’ repurposed as ‘w’, for maximum density. The hooked ‘t’ (minus the hyper-extended bar) as well as the weird ‘y’ are the original forms as shown in Photo-Lettering’s One Line Manual of Styles. These were replaced in the digital version sold by Monotype (and made at Compugraphic?).
