American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis (Picador first English hardcover edition)
The novel’s title and author’s name are based on Granjon, with additional front panel text set in what appears to be Courier 10 Pitch.
Dust jacket by an unknown designer for the 1998 Picador first English hardcover edition of American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. Jacket illustration by Marshall Arisman. Author photo by Jill Krementz. The true first edition was published in the United States in 1991 as a Vintage trade paperback original, after the Simon & Schuster edition was canceled.
The novel’s title and author’s name are based on Granjon, deconstructed into some kind of abstraction by altering or removing points along the contours of the glyphs. The remaining front panel text, as well as the text featured on the front and back flaps, is set in what appears to be Courier 10 Pitch. The interior title page features additional text set in New Caledonia. Publisher’s mark on spine of jacket and hardcover is set in Albertus.
An example of how the letterforms of Granjon were modified to create the titling featured on the first English hardcover edition of the novel.
View of back panel, spine and front panel of jacket.
The front and back flaps feature text set in what appears to be Courier 10 Pitch.
The interior title page features additional text set in New Caledonia.
3 Comments on “American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis (Picador first English hardcover edition)”
Wowzers! Was the fact that Granjon provided the starting point documented somewhere, or did you find that out yourself (solely based on the a’s terminal?)!? Anyway, an impressive find.
Thanks, Florian! At first, I was hoping it would be some experimental font. Maybe a mid-90s deconstruction or a grunge style. Searched and found several similar options but no exact matches. So I reconstructed parts of the cover type based on a hunch that the original designer might have deleted or modified points from the outlines of the glyphs to achieve the look. The e and the s seemed to support that idea. I initially suspected Garamond but none of the many versions I looked at ever really lined up. One of the closest options turned out to be Linotype’s Granjon, which is said to be partly based on Garamond. To be sure I launched Adobe Illustrator, overlaid type set in Granjon Bold onto the jacket titling, created outlines and simply removed what appeared to be the most obvious points from the contours. Thankfully, with very little else required, it appeared to be a dead match.
That’s some extreme font id-ing. My hat is off to you!