Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass – Christmas Album album art
Front
A false beard and faux italic Bookman Swash on the cover for Herb Alpert’s Christmas Album (1968). The font in use appears in phototype specimens as “Bookman Bold Italic Swash”. In the history included in his Bookmania specimen (pdf), Mark Simonson comments:
Along with Bookman Bold with Swash, it originated sometime in the mid-1960s. I have so far been unable to find out who designed and produced it. I think of it as the “Sixties Bookman.” […] Sixties Bookman expanded on ATF Bookman’s modest but distinctive swash character repertoire with 25 in the roman and 47 in the italic.
One unfortunate thing about Sixties Bookman’s italic is that most of the characters are slanted mechanically, with no optical correction. VGC, maker of the Typositor, created their own version using the same name, but with optically correct italics and a somewhat different set of swash characters.
Back
“The Christmas Song” single
3 Comments on “Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass – Christmas Album album art”
Here’s a glyph set of Bookman Bold Italic Swash a.k.a. “Sixties Bookman” as shown in a TypeShop catalog from 1973:
Swashy Christmas!
Very Nice, Florian! You can really see where Sixties Bookman was one of the main inspirations behind Bookmania. I was actually surprised that ATF’s Bookman had swashes, at all.
The book Type and Typography by Ben Rosen has some good specimens of the 50s and 60s Golden Oldies like Standard, Venus, and Fortune. All from either Ludlow, ATF, Bauer or Amsterdam Continental. I’ll be posting more on Flickr.
“Sixties Bookman” now has an entry of its own, as Bookman Swash.