Typographica

@typographica.org

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A review of #lettering and #typography. Since 2002. Posts by editor @stewf.com. Primarily on Mastodon with many from the type community: https://typo.social/@typographica

Photo of a neon sign featuring a smiling cartoon cowboy with a head and body as the shape of Nevada. Lettering next to the sign reads, “Where vintage meets voltage!”
Black-and-white photo of a building and parking lot.
Cropped detail of first photo, this one showing three signs in the window, two are neon, and one is a painted board reading, “Bakery / Dunford Products”.
Cropped detail from the photo in the previous post showing a closer look at the letters.
Page from a book showing a lowercase fraktur alphabet in red-orange with brown shading, surrounded by monolinear initials, many of Mediaeval form, in red-orange, brown, and blue.
Page from The Printing Art showing an ad for Publishers Printing Company. The lettering is extra bold geometric caps with a rough outline.
A page from The American Printer showing 5 lettering samples: Winold Reiss, Hans Flato, Louis N. Britton, Ilonka Karasz, and Jacob Asanger. Reiss’s lettering is extra bold geometric caps with a rough outline.
Spread showing copyright page and forward.
“…develop its own style with the help of the other, using the other to show qual- ity and value. Interest the good artists here. Put false shame away, put away that ugly word "commercial" which so often spoils young artists' ideals and feelings. Put that word in the corner and give color-happy and full of joy. And a very important thing—let us know the name of the artist. Put his signature on the poster. When his name is on the paper, he tries to give you his best. Under these conditions think how American advertising would look, produced by its staff of excellent illustrators. Until such time as American adver- tisers, and their agents; printers and other producers can be made to realize the wonderful commercial possibilities of Modern Poster Art; until we can show them how it has revolutionized commercial art abroad, the only way to improve matters is through the artists and especially the young ones, who just are beginning their way, and therefore can take to new views more easily. You all know that there are a great many artists here in America, Ameri- cans and strangers who are already fighting for the new idea, successfully and not successfully. You see it all the time here and there, and the movement grows.”
Cover of a magazine (unfortunately trimmed) titled “M. A. C” with the subtitle, “A Monthly Collection of Modern Designs”, 1915, 1, New York. The image is a brightly colored macaw on a red background decorated with vases of flowers.
Three smiling people hold books while standing in front of a bookshelf. In the foreground is a blue bin with casters.
Screenshot from a survey with the question, “Can you name some foundries you’ve purchased font licenses from?” The top answer is Klim (437), followed by Commercial Type (200), Grilli Type (170), Dinamo (144), Lineto (117).
Photo of a neon sign at night. The sign reads “Records” in red tubing with a blue tube frame.
Graphic of a bold, condensed script typeface called “Feline” with lots stroke contrast and a swash F.
Linocut-style illustration of a child surrounded by chainlink fence with the words “ABOLISH ICE” at the bottom.
Page from the Modulator specimen book showing multiple styles of the font family, all with different widths but the same counters and letter spaces. Text reads, “WHILE THE STEM WEIGHTS VARY, ALL NINE STYLES SHARE THE SAME COUNTER WIDTH. THIS REPETITION OF SHAPE AND SPACE CREATES A UNIFYING RHYTHM.”
Screenshot of a type specimen for “Modulator Text 150 Regular” with the sample string, “J St. Berkeley, California”. The letters are condensed, monolinear, and rounded.
Bar chart showing the usafe of various font services across desktop and mobile platforms. Self-hosted fonts are the most dominant choice, being used by over 71% of pages, while Google Fonts follows as the most popular third-party provider at approximately 47%. Other services such as Adobe and Font Awesome have much smaller footprints, each appearing on less than 4% of pages. The data shows a high degree of consistency between desktop and mobile usage across all categories, with only a slight decrease in Google Font usage on mobile devices.
Photo of the interior of a donut shop, with one of the signs on the wall. A trio of bar stools and a counter faces the window.
Two photos, side by side, each showing a brown sign hand painted with “Don’s Donut Bar” and a list of donut types.
Graphic with text set in the Hoefler Text font on a gray background: Hoefler Text on iOS & macOS This font has a high-rise hyphen, an en dash that is ten-twenty percent north of normal, and an em dash that is— you guessed it not optimal for regular text. HERE'S WHY- THEY ARE ALL CAP-HEIGHT. An Apple bug since 2009-2026.
Photo by Tom Spaulding of a large neon sign reading “Pee Wee’s Pizza / Coast to Coast” with the head of a chef on top.
A book spread (supplementary volume to the first book) describing optical correction in letter design.
A pop-up book spread titled “a Sleight of Type Design”. Interactive overlays demonstrate the unequal shapes in letterforms that otherwise appear equal at first glance.
Photo of a group of people looking something on a bench or table. All are men in business attire except a woman in a knit cardigan with her bare foot resting casually on the bench. Caption: “Muriel Cooper in conversation with unidentified males, c. 1972”.
Rotina Script. Specimen of an italic sans serif typeface in 8 weights. Some letters (r, z, s) have a cursive shape.
Rotina Swash. “New York City” logo set in in red with a purple 3D shade. The type is a neo-grotesque sans with swashes on caps and ending letters.
Spread of a magazine filled with symbols in black, yellow, green, and red. The title: ZAPF DINGBATS (SIGNS, SYMBOLS & ORNAMENTS)
Photo of a ballroom with a person presenting at the front behind a lectern. On the screen: Base-35 Fonts: ITC Avant Garde Gothic (4 styles) Helvetica (8 styles) New Century Schoolbook (4 styles) Palatino (4 styles) Symbol ITC Zapf Chancery ITC Zapf Dingbats
Cropped page showing many symbols, each with a code beneath it. Among them is Heart Exclamation, sitting next to a bulbous exclamation mark.
Screenshot of Gmail’s compose panel with the font menu opened to show all the fonts available: Sans Serif Serif Fixed Width Wide Narrow Comic Sans MS Garamond Georgia Tahoma Trebuchet MS Verdana
Marketing materials for the Apple Credit Card.
Illustration of a theater facade in orange and blue with rounded, art-deco lines. The sign lettering reads “SAVAR” in a geometric style reminiscent of the typeface Stop – the S has horizontal strokes and spine, the A is an open triangle shape like the Adobe logo, and the R has an open bowl created by a stem that doesn’t continue to the top of the form.
Screenshot of a zoom window showing a speaker video at top and shared screen slide with the following text: LEDs are: A. Unreliable B. Contributors to plastic waste C. God's curse upon humanity D. All of the above Dydia DeLyser and Paul Greenstein
A similar screenshot, but the word “War” is replaced with “Pete’s Tiny Weewee”.
A similar screenshot, but the word “War” is replaced with “Distraction from Real Issues”.
A similar screenshot, but the word “War” is replaced with “Bullies”.
A similar screenshot, but the word “War” is replaced with “Overcompensation”.
Screenshot of the top few hundred pixels from war.gov which show a symbol depicting the Pentagon and the logotype, “Department of War”. The poor spacing between “of” and “War” makes it seem like there are two spaces.
Still from a film or video in which several people (shot in extreme close up) in formal attire stare blankly in space while one person talks to the camera.
Cropped screenshot from a web page at rollingstone.com in which quotes and apostrophes are properly displayed except when placed immediately after linked text.
Photo of a man (Jim Parkinson) in a park rolling up his sleeve to reveal a “Born to Letter / Oakland” with a skull smoking a blunt in the center.
Another concrete stamp: G. MUSSO 12-37
Overhead photo of a sidewalk corner. A hand pulls back some grass to reveal a mark stamped in the concrete: “THE OAKLAND PAVING CO”. The Ns are mirrored.
Black and white cover artwork for reproduction purposes with crop marks in corners. At top is “The Original Sex and Broadcasting” see with “SEX” in a dry brush style with shadow effect. At the bottom is the text, “A HANDBOOK ON STARTING A RADIO STATION FOR THE COMMUNITY BY LORENZO WILSON MILAM”
Photo of a brick storefront with an awning. A metal sign reads “Spanjer Signs” in script and sans letters.
Logos for Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Citcus, Aerodrome, The Doobie Brothers, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, and California magazine.
Full-page ad from a magazine featuring a large zero filled with other numbers. Text below: Meet the youngest member of a successful family: Craw Clarendon BOOK DESIGNED BY WILL BURTIN Prominent figures in the type fashion parade, these ATF Craw Clarendons! This paragraph is set in the new Craw Clarendon Book, which supplements its bolder companion... forms a balanced contrast, yet retains the dynamic design of Craw Clarendon. Your local ATF Type Dealer delivers promptly from stock. Ask him for specimen brochures, or write directly to the Type Division, American Type Founders, 200 Elmora Avenue, Elizabeth, New Jersey. ATF TYPE NEWS IS GOOD NEWS FOR EVERYBODY
A magazine cover. The top half is black, with a white logo, “FAITH & FORM” in modernist geometric sans-serif letters. The bottom half is a black and white photo of a modern church interior.
Detail from an ad published in Macworld, November 1984 showing 12 bitmap fonts: Cupertino, Florence, Hollywood, Manhattan, Los Eisley, Paris, Saigon, Stuttgart, Sydney, Tokyo!, and Washington DC.
Photo of a storefront window with painted signs on the glass: PIZZA II TAKEOUT • DELIVERY • CATERING SLICES & WHOLE PIES
Photo of a magazine open to a spread with photos of red metal shelving filled with books, including “lettergraphics, SERIALS, BERTHOLD TYPES, BERTHOLD HEADLINES E3, and Monsen Super Display Types”
Video of a church gym at the end of a basketball game. As the players walk off the court one takes off his shirt in frustration and it flies behind him and lands on his back. The camera zooms in on the score: Home 38 / Guests 39.
A stack of transfer lettering sheets. On top is “PARA-TIPE” brand in the Microgramma style.
Photo looking down a sidewalk with building fronts on left and street on right. A red projection sign is directly ahead of the viewer. It has white letters in gothic and script styles. It reads: “Dahl-Beck Electric Co. Electricians Wiring & Motors”
A group of posters scattered on a striped rug. The posters are printed in red and black ink and have only text, with messages like “WE HAVE NO KING!”, “HANDS OFF! SCIENCE”, “HANDS OFF! SOCIAL SECURITY”, and “HANDS OFF! VOTING”