When personal computers became de rigueur for the design world, their font lists standardized the array of typefaces available to layout artists and typesetters. But in the decades before computer dominance, hand-drawn fonts were the highlight of television, comic book and promotional design. Rian Hughes, an award-winning graphic designer, illustrator, comic artist, logo designer and typographer who has designed record album sleeves and worked in advertising and for i-D magazine, has combed the archives of custom lettering to bring together literally thousands--4,500, to be exact--examples of inspiring and enlightening hand-lettered fonts from the 60s and 70s. Motion and activity were key components of design in this jet-powered era; letters frequently seem to be racing across the page, leaning eagerly into the future, bursting in concentric arcs from a distant sun, exploding from a single perspective point at the bottom of the page or the rear of the picture plane, plumping themselves up into dramatic three-dimensional space, or a combination of two or more of these activities. With a distinct air of retro cool, but old enough to be rarely seen in print today, these letters will fascinate and inspire anybody who works with letters or is interested in the way they look: graphic designers, typographers, art directors, anybody who works in advertising, students, illustrators and lovers of vintage design of all sorts.
