Cooper Black
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Category | Serif; display type |
---|---|
Designer(s) | Oswald Bruce Cooper |
Foundry | Barnhart Brothers & Spindler |
Date released | 1922 |
Re-issuing foundries | American Type Founders, Wordshape |
Cooper Black is a heavily weighted, display serif typeface designed by Oswald Bruce Cooper in 1921 and released by the Barnhart Brothers & Spindler type foundry in 1922. The typeface is drawn as an extra bold weight of Cooper Old Style. Though not based on a single historic model, Cooper Black exhibits influences of Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and the Machine Age. Cooper Black was a predominant lettering style popularized by Oswald Bruce Cooper in Chicago and the Midwest of America in the 1920s, given typographic form. An earlier weight of Cooper's type designs, Cooper Old Style (later just "Cooper") was released first, though Cooper Black was what BB&S foundry was after. Cooper Black was advertised as being "for far-sighted printers with near-sighted customers", as well as "the Black Menace" by detractors.
Cooper Hilite
Cooper Hilite is a version of Cooper Black originally designed by painting white relief impressions into a printed proof of Cooper Black. A messy version was released by the Russian type foundry Paratype in 1993. A detailed version that is a direct digital rendering of 'Oz' Cooper's original was released by the Wordshape type foundry in 2010. The Wordshape version is accompanied by a copy of Cooper Black that can be used to fill the incised spaces of Cooper Hilite with color via layering.
Cooper Black Italic
Cooper Black Italic is an italic variant, with swash characters as alternate characters.
A digitized version with swashes was first released by Wordshape as Cooper Black Italic Swash, designed by Ian Lynam Design. Wordshape's version includes alternate swash designs. Wordshape also released a non-swash version in 2010 that rivals previous versions by Adobe, Berthold, and others, though it is based on Cooper's original drawings in lieu of digitized versions of printed versions of Cooper Black Italic, as were previous versions.
Cooper Black Condensed
Cooper Black Condensed is a condensed variant, described by Cooper as 'condensed but not squeezed'. The condensed font is 20% lighter than the regular Cooper Black. Versions are available through many type companies such as Adobe and Wordshape.
Variants
Goudy Heavyface, Ludlow Black and Pabst Extra Bold were designed in response to Cooper Black.[1]
Soap, designed by Ray Larabie of Typodermic, is a uni-case variant based on Cooper Black.[2]
Bitstream Cooper, designed at Bitstream in 1986, added interpolated light, medium, and bold styles, with the corresponding italics, to the existing black and old style weights. They vary from the originals in that they suppose intermediate weights would not have the same depth of character as the original weights of the typefaces. [3]
Notable uses
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![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/38/Dad%27s_Army.jpg/300px-Dad%27s_Army.jpg)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1b/EasyJet_logo.svg/300px-EasyJet_logo.svg.png)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/02/Tootsie-Roll-WU.jpg/300px-Tootsie-Roll-WU.jpg)
In television
- the British sitcom Dad's Army (1968-1977)
- the American sitcom The Bob Newhart Show (1972-1978)
- the American sitcom Diff'rent Strokes (1978-1986)
- the American sitcom Cheers (1982-1993)
- the American sitcom Everybody Hates Chris (2005-2009)
- the American comedy-drama Louie (2010-)
- the American cartoon The Problem Solverz (2011-2013)
- the British comedy Derek (2013-)
- Wet Hot American Summer
- Everybody Loves Raymond Season 7 Episode 8 (The Annoying Kid) (the alphabet magnets are in Cooper)
- F Is For Family (Netflix Original Series) (2015-)
- Enos (1980-1981)
- The Italian dub of SpongeBob SquarePants.
In music
- the covers of The Beach Boys album Pet Sounds, the debut album of The Mothers of Invention, Freak Out!, and the debut album of Buffalo Springfield, Buffalo Springfield (1966)
- the cover of the Curtis Mayfield album Curtis (1970)
- the cover of The Doors album L.A. Woman (1971)
- promotional material by the American hip hop collective Odd Future (2007-)
- the cover of the Attack Attack! album "Someday Came Suddenly" (2008)
- the cover of The Black Keys album Brothers (2010)
- the cover of the Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats album Blood Lust (2011)
- the cover of the Marina and the Diamonds album Electra Heart (2012)
- the cover of Tyler, The Creator albums Bastard and Goblin
- the cover of Simon & Garfunkel album Sounds Of Silence (1967)
- the cover of Valley Lodge album Use Your Weapons (2013)
Other
- the logo and livery of airline easyJet (1995-)
- on the uniforms of the Houston Rockets basketball team (1970s-1990s)
- the final logo of the defunct discount store chain Zayre
- the previous logo for shoe retailer Payless ShoeSource
- the wrapping of the Tootsie Roll candy
- the logo for the fudge company Roly's Fudge
- the main text logo for the comic strip Garfield
- the logo for the fictional Good Guys doll in the Child's Play series
- the previous logo for tire manufacturer Cooper Tires
- the cap logo of Tomateros de Culiacán
- the font is used in many statistics in the video game Driver: You Are the Wheelman
- the font is used within Roots Canada's logo
- the font is seen on Dumb Ways to Die campaign & its video games.
See also
References
- Allan Haley. Typographic Milestones. John Wiley and Sons: September 1992. ISBN 978-0-471-28894-7.
- Blackwell, Lewis. 20th Century Type. Yale University Press: 2004. ISBN 0-300-10073-6.
- Fiedl, Frederich, Nicholas Ott and Bernard Stein. Typography: An Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Through History. Black Dog & Leventhal: 1998. ISBN 1-57912-023-7.
- Jaspert, W. Pincus, W. Turner Berry and A.F. Johnson. The Encyclopedia of Type Faces. Blandford Press Lts.: 1953, 1983. ISBN 0-7137-1347-X.
- Macmillan, Neil. An A–Z of Type Designers. Yale University Press: 2006. ISBN 0-300-11151-7.
External links
- Short overview
- Cooper Black font information (Microsoft typography)
- Type Gallery - Cooper Black
- Behind the Typeface: Cooper Black (satirical, but very informative video about Cooper Black by Cheshire Dave)
- Ian Lynam Design: Cooper Black Swash Italic
- Wordshape: Cooper Black Swash Italic
- Typophile: Cooper Black Italic swash alternates?
- Book of American Types: Cooper Hilite
- Cooper Black as a webfont on Fontdeck
- BlueCotton.com: Visual History of Cooper Black
- Font Meme - Cooper Black in use