Letraset International Typeface Competition Winners 1973

Date:2015-06-05 16:31:04| News|Browse: 151|Source: Fonts in Use|Author: Chris Purcell

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This is a follow-up to my previous post. I got this pamphlet in London in the summer of 1973. Not such a great design, really — look at how poorly the Avant Garde alternates are used on the title. And Herb Lubalin was one of the judges! Tracking and leading on the biographical notes are all too tight, too. But this piece shows all twenty winners — more than the first pamphlet I posted. The winning designers represent nine countries. The other judges were Derek Birdsall, Roger Excoffon, Colin Forbes, Armin Hofmann, and Process, Shatter, and Suds — are decorative redesigns of Helvetica. Tonal is a decorated Clarendon, and Piccadilly looks closely based on Broadway. Bombere is a redrawing of Grotesque No. 9. I only count five of the twenty as having upper and lowercase forms.

Tonal would have been very difficult to use as dry transfer lettering. The sample letters are 0.4″ high, and if you look closely, the background dots don't align perfectly from letter to letter. Borderline looks like it would have required many many alternates.

Since then, the only typefaces I can remember seeing of these twenty are Shatter, Stilla, and Le Griffe. Can anyone find any more of them in use? Carla Ward won £1000, but does anyone remember seeing Bombere? Of all of them, my favorite is Vincent. It doesn't work well at the small size shown, but I think it's beautiful.