A Very Easy Death by Simone de Beauvoir (Warner, 1977)
What a difference a mere four years can make: for some reason, Warner Books weren’t happy with the cover design for their paperback edition of A Very Easy Death from 1973 anymore, and commissioned a new one from M. Houner.
Both cover designs show text only, and both use typefaces that were en vogue at the time. But while Benguiat’s opulent swash Caslon was a child of the 1960s and already on its way out of fashion, Motter Ombra was still on the rise in 1977, and would see plenty of use in the 1980s and beyond.
Othmar Motter’s heavyweight with its characteristic semicircle shapes is set with one word per line, playfully arranged so that A and V form a (near-)mirror image. Also, the diagonals of the two y’s were brought into alignment and smoothly flow into the t’s top on the fourth line.
The black text at the bottom isn’t typographic. It looks like it was handwritten and subsequently cut out, for an edgy look.
