Communion Singles Club
In 2016, Communion Records launched the Singles Club. Every three months subscribers received a limited edition 7″ single on vinyl from one of the Communion artists, at a discounted price and accompanied by an exclusive print. The purely typographic artwork for the initial run was designed by SEEN, employing “die cut sleeves so the label art messes with the cover text. Each new single will be a new colorway.” – @seenstudio
The “impossible” bicolor sans probably is Bron. Released by Jeremia Adatte in 2014, Bron is a faithful revival of Bronisław Zelek’s Zelek, originally issued by Mecanorma for dry transfer lettering in 1972. The digital version comes in separate layer styles that can be combined for chromatic effect. I should add that SEEN is known for digging into predigital typefaces, so I can’t rule out that what we’re seeing is (their own digitization of) the original Zelek. [edit: It’s Dick Pape’s freebie digitization, see Jeremia’s comment.] The label text is set in another revival: Font Bureau’s Bureau Grot is a compilation and extension of the various numbered or generically named grotesques by British foundry Stephenson Blake.
2 Comments on “Communion Singles Club”
Thanks for the article @Florian Hardwig! Just to clarify, the font they used is the free Zelek Black typeface by Dick Pape made in 2010. This was vectorized from some unknown source (probably a Dover catalog) resulting in a poor quality font. In my version, I entirely redrawn and created new letters and added the chromatic versions. It was made faithful to the original design but optimized for print and screen.
Hi Jeremia, thanks for chiming in and setting this straight! Ah, bummer. I was aware that there’s also the subpar freebie version by Pape, but failed to take a closer look at the curves on the single covers. I now notice that there are indeed some bumps. S or B are particularly problematic. For anyone interested in using Zelek: Do yourself a favor and go with Bron!