The title of the book is set in Hans Eduard Meier's Syntax...

.. while the Lonely Planet logo appears to be Churchward 70, a Bauhaus-like geometric sans by Joseph Churchward that isn't available in digital format.

You could simulate the lonely planet logo lettering with some editing of either Blippo Black or Pump, mostly to tweak the 'e', close up the 'a' & 'p', and fix the tail of the 't'.

- Mike Yanega

Hi, Thankyou so much for you speedy responses.
Just checked Syntax and if you look closely some letters like the t and a are different. However i did find a black condensed version of Frutiger which seems like it could be identical. What do you think?
Cheers, Jenni

Regarding Joseph Churchward's typefaces: I recently came across a MyFonts news item about the recent formation of BluHead Studio. Apparently, they are now working on digitizing the Churchward creations.

A black condensed version of Frutiger seems identical!? Uh-uh, I don't think so. Look at the "tail"-less 'a', the single-storey 'g' etc.

This is definitely positively unmistakably Syntax, maybe a different digitisation, but Syntax for sure.

Uh oh - just realised what i've gone and done.
whilst i posted the image of the san diego cover onto the site, i was actually looking at the cover of the southeast asia book from the same series which im pretty sure is a condensed black frutiger. and yes - the typeface on the san diego book is definately syntax! apologies for the misunderstanding and thankyou for all your help

OK, now I understand. :^)

BTW I nailed which version they used -- it's Bitstream's Humanist 531.

Based on this press release they'll soon be replacing these fonts with Adobe originals... http://www.irishdev.com/NewsArticle.aspx?id=1818

...or maybe not.

> Prior to adopting InDesign, Lonely Planet found it challenging to handle the extensive language requirements of its guidebooks and other materials. The process required managing more than 50 customised font sets. Aligning font sets from authoring through printing led to heavy management overhead, confusion, and inadvertent errors.