Vintage Fonts #1

It's amazing to think I've been doing this blog for three years and haven't had a 70s font post. This topic was long overdue.  Just like the clothes, hair and decor, the seventies had a very distinctive lettering style.  I can spot a 70s font a mile away.  I'm not so sure the 2010s have a unique flair to decorative text, only time will tell.  One thing that is inarguable, however, is that the seventies was a time unto itself in every detail - down to the very letters on a page.

Of course, the same could be said of the sixties and eighties, but I'm particularly fond of the seventies brand to putting down a word.  I can't describe what it is - it would be too simplistic to say it was bold and off-the-wall.  It was more than that - it was ubiquitous.  Unlike the sixties, where wild examples of text were usually confined to concert posters and other forms of pop art, off-beat lettering was on everything from grocery store ads to high school textbooks.

So, let's check out some seventies lettering. Enjoy.


  1. Yeah, what took you so long? I love fonts, and even with conservative academic books I can name the decade from the cover, spine, or the title page/verso. I thought it was a sickness of mine as a result of being a librarian.

    Angels: Hard as the Come looks rather 60s to me. Not saying it wasn't 70s, just seems a bit of hangover if it is.

  2. What a fantastic collection! Your eye for typography serves you well.

    The only thing that seems to be missing here is a typeface well known to any SF genre fan, the MICR-inspired Data 70 font used whenever a graphic designer needed to convey the idea of "computer" text.

    And of course the evergreen Countdown, which should put your readers in mind of either Moonbase Alpha or British weekly comics.

  3. In fact, only last week I saw a font I recognised as Data 70 used for a Beatles promotion; I commented at the time that I had assumed it had been the ultimate 70s font, not one that was already in use in 1965.