Typophile

Sans-serif, narrow, geometrical, lo-case typeface from the masthead of an American 1946 magazine. Scanned.

Hello everyone,

I have attached a scan of the masthead. It reminded me of Wim Crouwel's 1957 Hiroshima poster but this was done almost a decade earlier. The letterforms seem to be drawn on a grid of a 7:2 ratio, if I am correct. Minimal counters and a very graphic, clean appearance.

Thanks in advance!

AttachmentSize
USAseptember1946.jpg25.27 KB

It’s a pretty sure bet that your sample is hand-lettered—notice how clumsy the ampersand is, compared to the other letters. And, given the date, the lettering probably was not based on an actual foundry-released typeface: the design is simply way too ahead of the pace of the times to have been commercially viable as a release in metal.

Or so it seems to me…

Thanks for the quick response, oldnick. Is there any metal or digital typeface that may look the part anyway? I guess the keywords are narrow letterforms with chaffed borders?

Thank you anyway for your answer.

This kind of construction is often paired with stroke contrast (see, for example, http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/canadatype/taboo/) or even a stencil effect.

There also is a font inspired by Crouwel’s Hiroshima lettering:
Nagasaki (http://www.milc.ro/)

You maybe also interested in SF Port Mc Kenzie by ShyFonts
(free for personal use)

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I found it using Find my Font - http://www.findmyfont.com

Captured from commoncrawl.org on 19 Apr 2015. original URL