The Push Pin Studios promo card
An undated business card for Jane Lander, who was a representative for Push Pin Studios between 1960 and 1967.
Designed in the neo-Victorian style that was popularized by Push Pin and others in the 1960s, the chosen typefaces all date from the 19th century.
“Jane Lander” is in an Ornamented face with concave stems and pointed terminals in the shape of concave diamonds. This style appears in Boston’s catalog from 1860. There are considerable differences across the sizes, and also between the cuts sold by various foundries. The wide R matches the Two-Line Great Primer Ornamented No. 6 as shown in Farmer’s 1867 specimen. This cut is also listed as 36 Point Ornamented No. 16 in a Morgan Press foundry type specimen, which might have been the source for Push Pin Studios. It’s paired with a light Ionic or Clarendon that’s also used for the smaller text in green.
“The Push Pin” likely is lettering – the P in “Push” appears to be inspired by Crayonette. The typefaces used for the names in cartouches and boxes are the left-leaning Pisa (1897), the dramatic Relievo No. 2 (1879), Rimmed Condensed (1866), and Ronaldson Condensed (before 1889).
7 Comments on “The Push Pin Studios promo card”
Thanks for sharing this fabulous find, Clay! Great to see you among our contributors.
(Some of Clay’s work has been featured on Fonts In Use before. Check out his website as well as The Smudge, a monthly newspaper, and Caboose, his imprint for limited edition artists prints and zines.)
And a big thanks to Matthijs for helping to track down the missing typeface IDs! This is our first documented Use for Ronaldson and Pisa. And the entries for the spiny Ornamented and Rimmed were specifically created for it.
For anyone who’s looking for a digital version of the former, see Vredenburgh, made by Jason Wickersty and released in 2012 as part of The Printer’s Type Case – Fonts of the Civil War Era, Vol. 1. Like the historical model, the weathered font is caps-only. However, the upper- and lowercase hold two different alphabets based on different optical sizes. The uppercase appears to be based on the same cut as used by Push Pin Studios.
As soon as he showed this to me I knew it had to be on Fonts In Use. Thanks for contributing, Clay!
The “IN” in PIN looks like a hand-drawn rendition of Marble Heart.
Not unlikely! Added.
There is a digital interpretation of the Four-Line Pica Ornamented No.20 by Ishar Hawkins as Jailbird.
But in this post, the typography was done by Morgan Press.