“Reach A New Canadian Hi: Chimo!” poster

This poster (17.5″×24″) for the Canadian rock group Chimo! was printed in late 1970 or 1971. The band name is rendered in Fat Albert, a set of extrabold shaded caps with close similarities to Walter Haettenschweiler’s OP-Letter, issued by Californian phototype company Lettergraphics in the late 1960s. “Reach A New Canadian Hi” uses all-caps Frankonia, set on a curve. This hybrid of roman and blackletter forms was first cast by the German Flinsch foundry in 1902. A phototype adaptation is shown as Francon in a Lettergraphics catalog from 1969. The original metal typeface had a number of alternates including a roman H. This poster features the other shape that follows the blackletter construction and resembles a lowercase h with roof.

Chimo! was a prog rock band from Ontario, formed under that name in 1969. Before disbanding again already in 1971, they released one self-titled album in November 1970, on the equally short-lived Revolver Records, which was distributed by RCA since December 1970.

The band’s name is taken from a friendly greeting in the Inuktitut language. The illustration shows an Inuit man wearing headphones, enclosed in a frame that apparently is meant to reference a style found in the art of indigenous peoples of North America.

Happy Canada Day!