That could be some of Gerard Unger's typeface designs. http://www.gerardunger.com/
Like Swift, Argo, Gulliver, Vesta and Big Vesta. He show an example of this on his page for BigVesta:
http://www.gerardunger.com/allmytypedesigns/allmytypedesigns20.html

Hi Ben,

check out these older threads:
Fonts scaling
type taboo

Also:
To Squoosh™, or Not to Squoosh™? by Paul D. Hunt.

The more geometric the design is, the less electronic condensing it can withstand.
F

Thanks for these pointers. I'm well aware of the conventions of never ever ever ever squashing or stretching type, am more thinking about type designers who have approached their design with this in mind, so Gerard Unger's stuff is very interesting. . .

"am more thinking about type designers who have approached their design with this in mind"
"Squooshability" is exactly the background of Adrian Frutiger's design of Icone. If you have access to the Frutiger monograph ("Complete Works"), there's some interesting discussion of that in there.

There's also a brief mention of it in this thread (search for Icone): http://typophile.com/node/55783

Squooshing is much more problematic than stretching, which IMO is not an issue.
In the early days of DTP, I would stretch Adobe Garamond to 150% in Quark (for text), and it looked great. Really!
Diagonals are the sticking point, so square faces without diagonals may be compressed lots without apparent distortion.
But no, I haven't designed any faces with squooshability as a parameter.

"I would stretch Adobe Garamond to 150% in Quark (for text), and it looked great. Really!"
Really?
I'm curious. Can you show that?

Couldn't open the Quark file, but here's a scan of a proof, from 1989.
So, I'm not quite sure precisely what are the percentage of stretching, they vary, but it was a lot of fun.

I bet it was fun. Doesn't look half as bad as I pictured, and not nearly as bad as this. You may be right that stretching horizontally is less detrimental than condensing – at least the contrast pattern stays comparably comfortable. The variance in stretch maybe seems almost more disturbing than the stretch itself (like comparing the two bottom lines – "biologically" seems a lot more "normal" than "determinations" no?).
I think it also looks "good"/"fun" in a very 1989 sort of way. Dunno – looking at that headline (and those O l i g o n u c l e o t i d e s ! ) today, and as a type designer, would you still do that?

“biologically” seems a lot more “normal” than “determinations”

Yes. I'm trying to reconstruct my design process.
I think that I was using the variety of stretching to "massage" text blocks to fit the layout, and the variety of stretching, and type styles, served to disguise that "cheating".
For instance, the really wide drop cap was done to optimize the justification of the first paragraph.
And the three squared-off items were stretched to fit the space they're in, with nice margins.

...in a very 1989 sort of way...

Yes, it was supposed to look new, advertising a new piece of scientific equipment, and stretched type signified new at the time, the DTP meme. Also the spectroscope itself was long.

The spectacular Silica was designed to tolerate compression well (as well as artificial slanting to make italics).

Examples for electronical condensing are shown in the Silica Specimen [pdf].
Are you sure about the slanting? Sounds unreasonable to me.

Florian -- Look at the last two lines in the three smallest text samples in that specimen . . .

Gosh, indeed! Thank you, Kent. Apologies, I had a quick glance only at the big samples in the right column.
Although I now see that Sumner Stone himself seems to endorse slanting, it still looks like a mere makeshift to me: Silica might withstand the slanting better than other faces do, but some characterforms (especially ‘a’ and ‘g’) do suffer. Also, it seems to affect the otherwise balanced spacing.

The slant factor in the specimen seems to be ~10°, with additional condensing (~92%). Stone has also recommended pairing Silica with the Italics of his Magma.

Squooshed

As I remember, Unger's Gulliver was designed specifically for USA Today and he knew, in advance, that they would be doing all sorts of things to it. Of course, I don't think it is available for purchase anywhere. Swift looks like a decent substitute.

I'm never sure if Unger actually doesn't mind his fonts being squooshed and stretched and maltreated. He almost seems to draw a certain satisfaction from the fact that it doesn't seem to hurt them as much as one may think.

BTW, AFAIK Gulliver is available under certain (pretty restrictive) conditions:
http://www.gerardunger.com/fontstore/store-gulliver.html

I've been in the same room with Gerard when he has said, "I knew they would be condensing it, and it was designed to withstand it, but I was still surprised how much they did it and how well it stands up." (I've probably paraphrased a little bit.)

'150% Extended And 80% Condensed Is Allowed'
Traktoretka, by František Štorm.

(Ooh, But I read the part about 'Not Headline' too late, I guess. Sorry.)