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Best of the Great Songs of Christmas album art

Photo(s) by Bart Solenthaler. Imported from Flickr on Dec 26, 2023. Artwork published in .
Best of the Great Songs of Christmas album art
Source: www.flickr.com Uploaded to Flickr by Bart Solenthaler and tagged with “davisonartnouveau”. License: All Rights Reserved.

This compilation of Christmas songs was produced by Columbia Special Products in 1970 as a promotional record for Goodyear, featuring artists like Mahalia Jackson, Barbra Streisand, Petula Clark, Tony Bennett, and Doris Day.

[More info on Discogs]

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  • Davison Art Nouveau
  • Clarendon
  • Helvetica

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6 Comments on “Best of the Great Songs of Christmas album art”

  1. The title is rendered in what looks like a bolder weight of Davison Art Nouveau, with close shade. To my knowledge, Dave Davison’s design came in a single weight only. Photo-Lettering, Inc. didn’t list a second weight in their 1971 catalog. I would therefore assume we’re looking at custom lettering, based on Art Nouveau.

    Below is a resetting using Sandana, a digitization and expansion of Dave Davison’s 1967 design. Quinn Davis recently made an alpha version available free of charge. It’s compiled from limited specimens and in-use examples, with many swash alternates and an added lowercase.

    “Great Songs of Christmas”, set in caps from Sandana, with numerous alternates, a tucked-on swash, and tightened spacing

  2. Thank you Florian! My revival being featured on Fonts in Use is the greatest Christmas gift I could ever get. If migrating the files from FontLab to Glyphs goes over well, I’ll see about mocking up some glyphs with the swashes from this lettering into it.

  3. A quick sketch Wasn’t really sure how to make the F do that weird serif-sticks-to-the-flare thing without it looking odd.

    Also about the license, since I technically don’t own the original design, I decided to just make it free with attribution to Davison Art Nouveau if possible. I’ll save the old license for my original fonts.

  4. You’re welcome, Quinn. I have adjusted the licensing info on our typeface page and in my previous comment.

    That F is indeed intriguing. I haven’t spotted it in any direct uses of Art Nouveau. This doesn’t mean it didn’t exist, of course. But maybe the lettering artist followed the related E with the hook-like middle serif (which you already included in Sandana).

  5. I think I have a workable F for this. It is based on the E with the downward swirl that can be seen on the Herbie Mann album cover. The A in Christmas comes from the final “swashbuckling” A in the type sample.

  6. The 1974 album Rock Is Here to Stay used Davison Art Nouveau

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