Françoise Hardy – Tous les garçons et les filles album art
Françoise Hardy’s debut album came out in November 1962, when the French singer-songwriter was 18 years old. Most of the songs were written by Hardy together with Roger Samyn (1923–2011). Originally released without a title, it was later referred to as Tous les garçons et les filles, after the title of the popular opening song, in order to distinguish it from Hardy’s other untitled albums.
The cover typeface appears to be Matterhorn, a condensed sans with straight-sided rounds and vertical contrast, issued by Headliners around 1960. It’s here used with contoured letterforms set on a bouncing baseline. I wonder how one would go about using a phototypeface from New York in Paris at the time. Typographie Internationale (Typinter) was a typesetting studio on 5 Rue des Reculettes. It acted as exclusive agent for Headliners, but my understanding is that this company wasn’t established before 1970.
No designer is credited. The photo is by Jean-Marie Périer (b. 1940), and the sleeve was produced by Paris-based printer Dillard et Cie.
Françoise Hardy died this week at the age of 80. RIP.
The design of the back cover is more mundane, and exclusively typographic. Hardy’s name is set in blue caps from (a version of) Kristall-Grotesk schmalfett. The line below features two weights of Chambord. The track list and liner notes is in Gill Sans with its Futura-like alternates for a, g etc.
4 Comments on “Françoise Hardy – Tous les garçons et les filles album art”
On closer inspection, Matterhorn is not a perfect match in all details. Shown below is a comparison between several letterforms from the cover and a sample of Matterhorn Medium C(ondensed) as shown in a 1962 specimen, with slightly stretched proportions.
The square dot on i could be a quick modification, just like the shorter ascender of d. The differences in the thinning of joints and the modulation may be explained by the effects of the contouring. But what about the larger apertures in e and the left side of s? Also, the spine of s seems to be steeper.
I don’t know of another typeface that comes closer – it’s not Radius – and have added “uncertain typeface ID” for now. If you have a suggestion, please leave a comment.
The sample of Matterhorn shown on Daylight Fonts seems to indicate that square-dot versions of the i and j were alternate characters. Even with the other slight differences, I think the ID is solid.
The Matador “r” is a very close match.
Thank you, Kevin and Curtis!
I didn’t see the alternate i and j for Matterhorn before. Then again, the shape in the Daylight Fonts sample – from Monsen, 1980 – appears to be rectangular (flattened), while it’s square in the application.
I believe that Matador is a close follower of Matterhorn. I had discarded this option because I assumed Matador came later, and wasn’t around yet in 1962. But maybe it was? The earliest known showing I’m aware of is in Photoscript’s 1968 catalog. There are a couple of differences between the two typefaces, like the lower A bar in Matador. Most of its glyphs are virtually identical to Matterhorn, though, including the faucet-like r, and also the e and s with their smaller apertures.