Nina – de Val album art
de Val is a mix of ambient music by Nina, released by Paralaxe Editions on cassette tape. The covers are letterpress-printed from hand-set type. They were designed (without any computers) by Oficina de disseny and printed at L’Automàtica.
The large condensed type, made from synthetic plastic, is Folio Bold Extra Condensed. It was almost certainly produced at Neufville in Barcelona where they made and sold plastic poster type – including some Bauer typefaces like Folio. [Dafi Kühne, “Alternatives to wood type in the 20th century” (MRes dissertation, University of Reading, 2019), page 85.]
The medium-sized “de Val” on the front of the cover is set in Venus ancha (Venus Extended) and the smaller type on the back is Venus fina (Venus Light).
The type on the cassette itself is rotogravure-printed Akzidenz-Grotesk.
Side note: Before finally confirming the identity of the large plastic type, I consulted with Dafi Kühne, Florian Hardwig, Indra Kupferschmid, Oficina de disseny, and a late-letterpress-era Neufville brochure scan from Hans Reichardt that specifically promotes Folio Extra Condensed as plastic poster type. This is a classic example of type identification research where the actual solution is almost inconsequential, but the effort is still totally worth it because of all the stuff I learned (or was reminded of) along the way. Thanks to everyone for indulging my curiosity!
2 Comments on “Nina – de Val album art”
For reference, here is a photo Diego Bustamante sent via email showing more characters of the plastic type. Without this it would have been a lot harder to verify the identity of the typeface.
Great project! Great typeface identification process!