A custom alphabet by Brownjohn, Chermayeff & Geismar, handmade for
their own use circa 1960. It appears under the name
Electric Circus in New
Alphabets A to Z (1974), and is referenced in an article
about BCG in Typographica New Series no. 2 (1960).
The alphabet was designed for the That New York booklet
in 1960. Although it appeared in an advertisement entitled
‘Modern
Banking Is Electronic Banking’ in Fortune magazine in
1961, it wasn’t until it was applied to the Electric
Circus poster in 1967 that it found its proper place.
Chermayeff said it was ‘the first totally appropriate client to
come up and take advantage of it.’ —Steven Heller,
Design Literacy: Understanding Graphic Design (New York:
Allworth Press, More…
A custom alphabet by Brownjohn, Chermayeff & Geismar, handmade for their own use circa 1960. It appears under the name Electric Circus in New Alphabets A to Z (1974), and is referenced in an article about BCG in Typographica New Series no. 2 (1960).
The alphabet was designed for the That New York booklet in 1960. Although it appeared in an advertisement entitled ‘Modern Banking Is Electronic Banking’ in Fortune magazine in 1961, it wasn’t until it was applied to the Electric Circus poster in 1967 that it found its proper place. Chermayeff said it was ‘the first totally appropriate client to come up and take advantage of it.’ —Steven Heller, Design Literacy: Understanding Graphic Design (New York: Allworth Press, 2004). [Note that the date Heller provides here may be incorrect; the 1960 Typographica article mentions that the ad appeared in Fortune in 1959. —ed.]
There is a poorly drawn digital version by Jason Fagone (Soup Type, 1997). Manuel Wesely revived it for his own use in 2021.
