I'm finding it hard to keep to my schedule of posting two fonts every two weeks - and I'm pretty certain that I'm falling behind. So, to make amends, here we are with the second post in as many days. And it brings us to a type designer that none of us would expect to find here, I'm sure: Peter Saville. If in fact he did design the font above, though that has to be the presumption.
UPDATE: My presumption was wrong - the font that you can download for free is, in fact, Trajan. Instead I've replaced it with Johnston, over here.
It was used on the cover of Closer and is therefore called Joy Division Closer - and you can download it for free (along with a number of other fonts) from Peter Saville's website.
And now back to somebody who's been mentioned before and will be mentioned again: Eric Gill. And the font this time is Joanna, which Gill designed in the period 1930-31 and used to handset his book An Essay on Typography. It's notable for its almost vertical 'upright' italics, and the unusually small size of its italic characters. Joanna is versatile and extremely legible. The letterforms are a bit narrow, so the face is very economic as well - a lot of text can be packed densely together on a page with Joanna. It also mixes very well with other typefaces designed by Eric Gill; especially Gill Sans.
I'm not sure if that was designed by Saville, the fonts on that site look like copies of typefaces used on Joy Division covers. They've got a font there called 'Atmosphere 88' which looks remarkably like Wim Crouwel's 'New Alphabet'...
Posted by: George Morgan | 27 March 2008 at 01:21 PM
Well, I'm inclined to agree with you George. But if the fonts weren't designed (or at least drawn) by Peter Saville or an assistant how does he get round licensing issues?
Posted by: davidthedesigner | 27 March 2008 at 01:28 PM
I always thought that was a tribute site, not Peter's (or associates) own work.
The URL alone is a bit clunky.
Posted by: Andrew | 27 March 2008 at 02:06 PM
I'm not entirely sure about that, Andrew. The credits for the site http://www.btinternet.com/%7Ecomme6/saville/saville_site_credits.htm imply that it has some sort of endorsement from Peter Saville himself.
Posted by: davidthedesigner | 27 March 2008 at 02:42 PM
Regarding the typeface on Closer, these threads on Typophile may well be of interest:
http://www.typophile.com/node/41650
http://www.typophile.com/node/32322
Particularly of note, from the first link, a post from Paul Barnes (yes, _that_ Paul Barnes) explains exactly where it came from.
Posted by: ManxStef | 31 March 2008 at 09:17 PM