In Love With Iconic, Retro Book Covers

And of course, their typefaces.

We live in the golden age where book covers are more often hand-lettered than not. But head back a few decades and you’ll see that ‘regular’ fonts were still gracing the covers of some of the most iconic books of all time and doing a darn good job of it.

Eurostile

Source: The Book Cover Archive

Bodoni

Source: The Book Cover Archive

Hawthorn

Source: http://thereandbackagainwithtolkien.blogspot.dePhoto by Alex Meyer. License: All Rights Reserved.

Compacta

Source: The Book Cover Archive

Grotesque No.9

Source: http://www.flickr.com. Uploaded to Flickr by Steve and tagged with “fanfare”. License: All Rights Reserved.

Times

Source: The Book Cover Archive

…And a Mystery!

This version of the hugely popular The Great Gatsby cover is turning out to be more elusive than we imagined. Even What The Font(where we rush to every time we want to look smart but can’t identify a font) came up empty when we ran a search.

What do you think?

This post was possible thanks to The Book Cover Archive and Fonts In Use. If you’re a book nerd and a type geek, you should be hanging out there right now.

Spotted other interesting typefaces on book covers?

You can post your finds on Fontli (we have an iPhone and a Windows phone app, Android’s in the works) or ask our 24,290-strong community for help identifying it in the SOS section.

And if you liked this post, please do hit the Recommend button so others can find it too. Thanks for reading!