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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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 Comments on “Best of the Great Songs of Christmas album art”
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
The 1974 album Rock Is Here to Stay used Davison Art Nouveau