One group of fonts I’ve always found fascinating is fonts used exclusively by a single corporation as part of their “corporate identity” programs. There are a number of such fonts for which I’m trying to find good quality printed copies.
Currently, I have a printed copy of the official logo font of IBM (without the stripes). The main ones I’m looking for are the following:
*GTE (1971-2000 logo):
—Squarish font resembling lettering on a CRT screen. Used mostly during the 70’s in division names, such as:
——Sylvania (also used in newspaper ads for Sylvania TV sets, sometimes even on the sets themselves)
——Lenkurt
——Automatic Electric (Laboratories)
——General Telephone Directory Company
——General Telephone Company of (xxx)
*3M (1961-78 “Mondrian” logo by Gerald Stahl)
—Font colloquially referred to as “Plumber’s Gothic”. Comes in upper and lower case with numerals. Bears a very strong resemblance to the Georg Trump font “City”.
*Fisher Price (1971-)
—Serif font derived from the turn-of-the-century ATF newspaper font “Schoeffer”. UC/lc, numerals, most punctuation.
*CBS Sports (1981-)
—Franklin Gothic Italic, with block serifs added. Currently can be seen in the NCAA logo.
Would anyone happen to have any of these companies’ CI manuals? Or know of a way I could get my hands on them?
