Teatar &TD logo and posters (1970–1973)

Contributed by Florian Hardwig on Dec 1st, 2024. Artwork published in

circa 1970

Undated poster (c.1970) with the weekly program of Teatar &TD. The logo is introduced with a fine manicule. Stencil is also used for the days of the week. Dates are in Schmale Herold, names of plays in Blippo and Helvetica, and times in Annlie Italic.

Mihajlo Arsovski was a graphic designer working in Croatia. From Adrian Curry’s 2023 column for MUBI’s Notebook column:

Mihajlo Arsovski was born in Skopje, Macedonia, on July 9, 1937, to a family of pre-war leftist revolutionaries and photographers who moved to Zagreb after World War II. He studied architecture and art history before becoming one of the pioneers of modern Croatian graphic design. […] Over the course of his 60-year career, the famously publicity-shy Arsovski designed books, newspapers, album covers, signage, furniture, theater sets, and costumes, but it is as a poster designer that he is best known. He designed some 200 posters for the renowned experimental Zagreb theater company &TD Theatre, and his logo design for the company is still in use today.

Arsovski’s logo for Teatar &TD was introduced around 1970. It combines Stencil with a swashy ampersand probably taken from Letraset’s Bookman Bold, their version of Bookman Swash. (This glyph is not unique to the swash-laden sixties release, but was included already in ATF’s original Bookman.). Arsovski provided posters to the theater already before. In the late 1960s, he mostly used a version of Egyptienne Bold Condensed in big and partly overlapping letters, supported by Akzidenz-Grotesk, see examples from 1966, 1967, 1968, and 1969. He employed the same combination for a series of movie posters made in 1966 for Kinematografi Zagreb.

The first few theater posters to feature the new logo are printed in multiple colors. Starting with the poster for Priča o vojniku from 1971, Arsovski dropped the colors and went white-on-black. He still included illustration – portraits of Ramuz, Stravinski, and the titular soldier. For subsequent posters, though, the designer relied on the power of typography, and exclusively worked with type. The chosen typefaces are diverse in style and origin, and include three originals designed for the Lettera series of alphabet source books: Sea weed, and Sezession, and Roaring Twenties. In addition to the landscape format and the logo, the text typeface is another constant: it’s Blippo Black.

Arsovski died in 2020 at the age of 83. The website of Zagreb’s Muzej za umjetnost i obrt (MUO, Museum of Arts and Crafts) has a profile from that year (in Croatian). You can see more of his work in the museum’s excellent online archive.

Ivo Brešan – Predstava Hamleta u selu mrduša donja, općine Blatuša, 1971. Brešan’s name is in a variant of , distinguished by closed counters in B, a straight leg in R, a centered middle bar in E, and more small adjustments. I assume this is , with modifications [edit: or rather , see comments]. The title combines a.k.a. Elvira, , a hand-rendered (?) version of extrafett (or ?), and . — **Source: repozitorij.muo.hr** Image: MUO – Muzej za umjetnost i obrt. License: All Rights Reserved.

Ivo Brešan – Predstava Hamleta u selu mrduša donja, općine Blatuša, 1971. Brešan’s name is in a variant of Broadway, distinguished by closed counters in B, a straight leg in R, a centered middle bar in E, and more small adjustments. I assume this is Roaring Twenties, with modifications [edit: or rather **Trio Serie A**, see comments]. The title combines **Handels-Cursief** a.k.a. Elvira, **Murillo**, a hand-rendered (?) version of **Bernhard-Antiqua** extrafett (or Lo-Schrift?), and Schmale Herold.

Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz & Igor Stravinsky – Priča o vojniku (L’Histoire du soldat), 1971. The title is in , with a custom-added flat diacritic. The names above use all-lowercase and all-caps . — **Source: repozitorij.muo.hr** Image: MUO – Muzej za umjetnost i obrt. License: All Rights Reserved.

Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz & Igor Stravinsky – Priča o vojniku (L’Histoire du soldat), 1971. The title is in **Sea weed**, with a custom-added flat diacritic. The names above use all-lowercase Helvetica and all-caps **Century Expanded**.

Luigi Pirandello – Henrik četvrti (Enrico IV, 1922), 1972. “ITD Galerija” is in , “Pirandello” in , “Henrik” in , and “četvrti” in , again with a horizontal bar as caron. — **Source: repozitorij.muo.hr** Image: MUO – Muzej za umjetnost i obrt. License: All Rights Reserved.

Luigi Pirandello – Henrik četvrti (Enrico IV, 1922), 1972. “ITD Galerija” is in **Thorne Shaded**, “Pirandello” in **Smoke**, “Henrik” in **Sezession**, and “četvrti” in Helvetica, again with a horizontal bar as caron.

Georg Büchner – Woyzeck (1836/1913), 1972, with overlayered and Italic for “büchner” — **Source: repozitorij.muo.hr** Image: MUO – Muzej za umjetnost i obrt. License: All Rights Reserved.

Georg Büchner – Woyzeck (1836/1913), 1972, with overlayered Thorne Shaded and **Torino Italic** for “büchner”

Heiner Müller – Filoktet (Philoktet, 1965), 1972. The title uses , with giant . The playwright’s name is in lowercase Torino Italic. — **Source: repozitorij.muo.hr** Image: MUO – Muzej za umjetnost i obrt. License: All Rights Reserved.

Heiner Müller – Filoktet (Philoktet, 1965), 1972. The title uses **Roaring Twenties**, with giant EndcapS. The playwright’s name is in lowercase Torino Italic.

Peter Nichols – Jedan dan u smrti male Joe (A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, 1967), 1972. and Italic are used for the title and for “Nichols”. — **Source: repozitorij.muo.hr** Image: MUO – Muzej za umjetnost i obrt. License: All Rights Reserved.

Peter Nichols – Jedan dan u smrti male Joe (A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, 1967), 1972. Helvetica and Bookman Swash Italic are used for the title and Century Expanded for “Nichols”.

Harold Pinter – Stara vremena (Old Times, 1971), 1973. The geometric hairline caps are from ; “Pinter” appears to be in Thirteen. — **Source: repozitorij.muo.hr** Image: MUO – Muzej za umjetnost i obrt. License: All Rights Reserved.

Harold Pinter – Stara vremena (Old Times, 1971), 1973. The geometric hairline caps are from **Walter**; “Pinter” appears to be in **Prismania Thirteen**.

Zvonimir Majdak – Kužiš, stari moj starring Mladen Budišćak, 1973. Caps from are paired with another release: “majdak” is set in . — **Source: repozitorij.muo.hr** Image: MUO – Muzej za umjetnost i obrt. License: All Rights Reserved.

Zvonimir Majdak – Kužiš, stari moj starring Mladen Budišćak, 1973. Caps from Schmale Herold are paired with another Berthold release: “majdak” is set in **Normande Condensed**.

Eugène Ionesco – Lekcija (La Leçon, 1951) / Slobodan Šembera – Vrijeme za gastritis (1971), 1973, with titles in and — **Source: repozitorij.muo.hr** Image: MUO – Muzej za umjetnost i obrt. License: All Rights Reserved.

Eugène Ionesco – Lekcija (La Leçon, 1951) / Slobodan Šembera – Vrijeme za gastritis (1971), 1973, with titles in **Jim Crow** and **Baby Arbuckle**

Typefaces

2 Comments on “Teatar &TD logo and posters (1970–1973)”

Bryson Stohr says:
Feb 24th, 2025 6:31 pm

The Ivo Brešan poster could be using Trio A instead of a solidified Roaring Twenties; the details seem to be closer to the former than the latter. Of course, a full online sample of Roaring Twenties is hard to come across, so I could be wrong here for all I know.
Florian Hardwig says:
Feb 25th, 2025 10:41 am

Thanks, Bryson! Your suggestion is spot on. Adjusted.

When I created a page for Roaring Twenties, I did write it’s “possibly inspired by Trio Serie B”, but then failed to make the connection and check whether it could be Trio Serie A. I guess I simply wanted it to be Roaring Twenties after identifying that face for the Filoktet poster.

I don’t know in which form Trio (A) was available in the early 1970s – I somehow doubt that Arsovski worked with 1930s German metal type – but we already have recorded one other in-use example (from Sweden in 1964), so it seems likely that face was still floating around in some form.

Roaring Twenties lacks Trio B’s second hairline. The basic letterforms are distinguished by blunt apexes in glyphs with diagonals.

Roaring Twenties as shown in Lettera 3