Typophile

(x) Headline from 1940s British Newspaper - ATF Century Bold {Mark S}

TorbjornLunde

I’m designing a book (cover and inside) for a friend. It is WW2 shipwreck story, and the author really wants to emphasise authenticity. I thought using a font that was usual for newspapers in that era (at least for the cover, but maybe through the book as well) could be a way to convey this authenticity.

I have some scans of newspapers clippings which I put through WhatTheFont. (I’m a novice graphic designer, so my type history probably isn’t as good as it should be!). I don’t know how accurate WhatTheFont is, and maybe they don’t even exist in digital versions. Also, communication is the main goal here, so if I can find a good font that is close enough for the target audience to recognise it I would be happy with that as well.

Here are the fonts that WhatTheFont suggested:

Looking at it, it to me seems a bit like a modern serif like Didot, but much more sturdier and less delicate. I was thinking of going with some variant of Century. If that is indeed a good idea, which is the best cut to go by (for headlines), and are there fonts that work well with this that I can use to set the body text? I see Adobe has 2 version of Century (Old Style and Expanded) which are described as good text-fonts.

These are probably all stupid questions, but I would appreciate any help!

I’m sorry if this one belongs more in design that Type ID. Wasn’t sure where to put it.

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The Evening News.png100.9 KB
Daily Mail.png322.76 KB
Mark Simonson

It's the old ATF foundry face Century Bold. The third one in your list, Century No1 SB-Bold is a digital version of it. Bitstream's Century Expanded Bold is another.

Hrant H Papazian

Authenticity is a tricky thing. You have to consider the difference between what fonts were actually used in the 1940s versus what fonts people feel were used at that time - possibly pretty close, but possibly quite different.

So I might actually look more at things that people remember seeing regularly about the 40s - not fonts, but buildings, cars, etc. From there I would try to find fonts that evoke those visual ideas.

Furthermore, when it comes to choosing a text face for the body of the book, there's a severe limit to how stylistically relevant that era's fonts are in conveying that era today. Text works on a very "detached" level.

hhp

Riccardo Sartori

Hopefully you could find some useful information in a paper I linked to on another related thread (http://typophile.com/node/64039):
http://www.typefacedesign.org/resources/essay/MitjaMiclavcic_essay_scr.pdf

TorbjornLunde

Mark Simonson: Thanka for precise answer. (By the way, loving Mostra Nuova. Hope I can find an excuse to buy it.)

hrant: Thank you for advice, I will keep it in mind.

riccard0: Thanks for the link and the eassay. Very interesting, and beautifully designed.

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