The Electric Circus posters, flyers, ads
The Electric Circus was a nightclub and discotheque located at 19–25 St. Marks Place between Second and Third Avenues in the East Village neighborhood of New York City, from June 1967 to September 1971.
As far as I can tell, this experimental typeface was developed by Chermayeff & Geismar [update: later confirmed by the firm on Twitter]. In a way, it presages the photocopier distortion that became common in the 1970s–90s. I don’t yet know the typeface’s name, and perhaps it was exclusive to C&G. The cover for Lou Reed’s Transformer album used a very similar face, which is fitting since The Velvet Underground was a fixture at The Electric Circus. Digital fonts in this genre include Double Vision (clearly inspired by this film font) and Alphabat.
Read more about this type style in a post by Art Chantry about a 1962 album cover, which I assumed to be its first use, until finding C&G’s 1960 ad for Transitron. The concept may have begun with That New York, an experimental typography booklet produced at The Composing Room.
17 Comments on “The Electric Circus posters, flyers, ads”
Maybe not the exact same font, but a good start: http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/typeart/double-vision/regular/
Check your vision ;-) Double Vision was mentioned in the post.
Spacer from Club-21 : http://www.identifont.com/similar?4ZR
Thanks for your comment, Emmanuel. Spacer is only similar, but not a hit — see e.g. ‘S’ or ‘M’ — just like the mentioned Double Vision, Alphabat, Eye Doctor, and Electus. Did you see the update? The designers of this Use, Chermayeff & Geismar, have confirmed that it is an experimental and apparently exclusive typeface developed by them.
Thanks for the reminder of Spacer, though. I’d missed that one on the list of similar faces because it no longer appears on FontShop. Looks like Club-21 took it off the market. Double Vision comes closest.
The origins of many of these type designs are still unclear. The earliest publicly available example I’ve found so far is Electus (from PLINC’s 1969 catalog).
… interesting – but from whom is this similar font here? [link removed]
Robert, I removed the link you’ve posted because that site hosts pirated fonts. The font you mention is by Jason Fagone, released in 1997 on his now defunct label Soup Type AKA Alphabet Soup (not to be confused with Michael Doret’s foundry of the same name). It is not clear to me whether this limited and poorly drawn “Electric Circus” is a freebie or abandonware, but with that name it is obviously based on the work by Chermayeff & Geismar.
A showing of this custom face appears in New Alphabets A to Z, by Herbert Spencer and Colin Forbes, 1974. It is credited to Ivan Chermayeff and Thomas Geismar.
Spotted another one:
Can anyone determine the original font used to create Electus?
As we write on the Electus page, the origins are unclear, and it could be derived from Chermayeff & Geismar’s Electric Circus face, shown here. It’s not certain that C&G began with an existing font to create Electric Circus.
Pretty sure this font was based on how type distorts on shipping container sides and vertical glass shutters, explored by Robert Brownjohn from Brownjohn Chermayeff & Geismar in Typographica magazine.
Thank you, that’s an interesting link! Brownjohn’s Street Level feature in Typographica 4 is reproduced on robertbrownjohn.com.
Pretty sure Electric Circus is based off Aurora Grotesk with a couple of modifications. Here I recreated the effect used in the font by masking one layer of text to another.
Yes, that checks out, Quinn. All glyphs appear to match, including the numerals seen in some of the images above, as well as the high-waisted P, the G with the small spur, and the Q with the diagonal stub tail.
Just for clarification: you wrote Aurora Grotesk, but since there are so many styles and versions under the Aurora name, it’s the one that we have as a collective entry titled Anzeigen-Grotesk / Neue Aurora IX.
One of the few discernible differences between Fette Anzeigen-Grotesk by Haas (1932) and Neue Aurora IX schmalfett a.k.a. Aurora Bold Condensed by Weber (1960s) is the leg of R: it’s vertical in the former and diagonal in the latter. (Caveat: this distinction was later blurred in adaptations for photo and digital typesetting.)
Interestingly, the same difference can be observed in Chermayeff & Geismar’s custom Electric Circus (vertical leg) vs. Photo-Lettering’s commonly available Electus (diagonal leg). In other words: in the image above, you recreated Electus, not Electric Circus ;-)
Good catch, Quinn!
Further confirmation of Quinn’s theory: An Electric Easter – The Electric Circus Concert Series program.