In 1919 Oswald Cooper designed his eponymous
typeface for BB&S: an informal roman with soft serifs. But
it was the hugely successful Black weight, following three years
later, that blazed the trail for extra bold advertising type in
America. Cooper Black was also cast as
Pittsburgh Black (ToC), Signum (Caslon),
Wentworth Black (Wimble) [Reichardt 2011].
Alternate swash caps were available for the italic, and many
other swashes were later added by phototype shops. Cooper
Hilite was released in 1925.
Licensed by Schriftguss in Germany who added Fette Copra-Kursiv (1929, different from
BB&S’s Black Italic, 1926), Halbfette
Cooper-Antiqua (semibold, 1931) [Klimsch] [Wetzig 1926–40], and Lichte
Cooper-Kursiv (an open adaptation of the italic, copied by
BB&S in 1928 as Cooper Tooled Italic) [McGrew 1993].
Various digitizations. Bitstream’s
(1985) includes a variant without angled bottom serifs on ‘p’ and
‘q’. URW’s
includes the Condensed and adds Outline and Stencil styles.
Wordshape’s More…
In 1919 Oswald Cooper designed his eponymous typeface for BB&S: an informal roman with soft serifs. But it was the hugely successful Black weight, following three years later, that blazed the trail for extra bold advertising type in America. Cooper Black was also cast as Pittsburgh Black (ToC), Signum (Caslon), Wentworth Black (Wimble) [Reichardt 2011]. Alternate swash caps were available for the italic, and many other swashes were later added by phototype shops. Cooper Hilite was released in 1925.
Licensed by Schriftguss in Germany who added Fette Copra-Kursiv (1929, different from BB&S’s Black Italic, 1926), Halbfette Cooper-Antiqua (semibold, 1931) [Klimsch] [Wetzig 1926–40], and Lichte Cooper-Kursiv (an open adaptation of the italic, copied by BB&S in 1928 as Cooper Tooled Italic) [McGrew 1993].
Various digitizations. Bitstream’s (1985) includes a variant without angled bottom serifs on ‘p’ and ‘q’. URW’s includes the Condensed and adds Outline and Stencil styles. Wordshape’s covers the Italic only, but with swash caps. See Cooper* (indestructible type*, 2024) for a historically accurate open-source version (roman and italic, w/ swash caps for both).
