#tim ely

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Milk! #6 (July 1998) cover by Pat Duke and Tim Ely.

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Typography Tuesday

EUROSTILE & MICROGRAMMA

While watching the Netflix short series HALSTON (which I recommend, btw), I became intrigued by Halston’s typographic logo, which I had never paid much attention to before. I could tell it was an extended version of a san serif I was not familiar with; kind of chunky, yet lithe. I was strangely attracted to its balance in this particular string of letters: the horizontally-elongated H and N at either end; the pyramidal A; the L and T forming a diagonal to each other across the very central, upright S; the TV-screen O. Very satisfying. But, what typeface is this?

Well, it wasn’t hard to find out: it is Eurostile Extended designed by Aldo Novarese in 1962, which itself is a modification of Microgramma designed by Novarese and Alessandro Butti in 1952. Both were designed for the Nebiolo Type Foundry where the two designers served as art directors. Microgramma is a display face in all caps. After Butti died in 1959, Novarese revised the design, adding lowercase letters and developing a family of seven font styles.

I was curious if we held any books that use Eurostile, and indeed we do!! And it’s a book I know well: Synesthesia, shown here, by Terence McKenna and Tim Ely, published in New York in an edition of 75 copies by Granary Books in 1992. It uses both Eurostile Normal and Extended, handset and printed by the master letterpress printer Philip Gallo at his Hermetic Press in Minneapolis.

All this from watching a Netflix series!

View another post on Synesthesia.

View our other Typography Tuesday posts.

-- MAX, Head, Special Collections