Die verlorenen Welten des Zdenek Burian by Judith Schalansky (ed.)
“The Lost Worlds of Zdeněk Burian”, Czech painter and book illustrator. Published in the Naturkunden series by Matthes & Seitz.
The energetic brush script is Signalist by Mika Melvas. This Finnish typedesigner has released quite a few interesting scripts in the past years, see the upright and angular Saline in particular. Signalist was picked by David Sudweeks for Typographica’s Typefaces of 2012. In his review, he wrote:
The texture is just uneven enough to be believable, and yet sufficiently normalized to not draw undue attention to any individual part. And it accomplishes all this with a minimal cast; the face abstains from the present arms race for fully-loaded script fonts, itself containing no alternates or non-standard ligatures.
By and large I agree with this view, but looking at the two mid-word letters ‘r’ that don’t connect from the preceding ‘e’ and ‘o’, I wish there were a more cursive solution for this.
Apart from that, it is an admirable cover. Burian’s illustration style, the reduced color palette and the material — a coarse cloth — help to evoke an appropriate 1950s/1960s atmosphere. Although colleague Sudweeks regards Signalist “as fully contemporary”, I’d argue that the typeface has a hand in this retro vibe as well.
