Who Killed Hunter S. Thompson?
The real Times Roman
Starling, the revival by Mike Parker of a Lanston Monotype typeface which Parker argued was the real Times Roman. The design from the early 1900s was by the American designer and sailor William Starling Burgess and grabbed by Stanley Morison for the Times of London font in 1930. Font Bureau produced the font in 2009 for Parker.
It was the obvious choice for the cover of a Hunter Thompson memorial book. Why? Well, Hunter became famous for “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” published by Rolling Stone in 1971. The magazine’s typeface in those early days was Times Roman. (Specified by the magazine’s first art director, John Williams, who was moonlighting from his production job at Ramparts, which used Times beautifully. But the digital fonts for Times still don’t have a good optical size for display. Starling does, as well as a full range of weights.
The book, Who Killed Hunter S. Thompson? is published this week by Last Gasp. Illustration by Ralph Steadman, who illustrated “Fear and Loathing,” and ever since linked with Hunter.
More on Starling on the Font Bureau website: Mike. A Tribute to Mike Parker 1929–2014.
Starling is available at Type Network.
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Some of Mike Parker’s Starling research: here.