Lohn der Angst by Georges Arnaud
Contributed by Owen Gardner on Aug 26th, 2023. Artwork published in
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Photo: Owen Gardner. License: All Rights Reserved.
Hubertus Foerster’s German translation of Georges Arnaud/Henri Girard’s Le Salaire de la Peur (The Wages of Fear), the basis of both Henri-Georges Clouzot’s film of the same name and William Friedkin’s Sorceror, published by (East) Berlin’s Verlag Tribüne.
The illustration is by Klaus Vonderwerth and the printing performed by the Grafischer Großbetrieb Völkerfreundschaft Dresden, but no designer is credited. The title and author are set in Maxima, the logotype of the series uses the a from Motter Ombra.
The same illustration was used already in 1979, with different typography. The cover design with Maxima and Ombra was introduced in 1981 (the shown copy is from 1985).
2 Comments on “Lohn der Angst by Georges Arnaud”
Thank you for this contribution, Owen!
Maybe you have heard already, and maybe it was your motivation for preparing this post: Gert Wunderlich, the designer of Maxima, sadly died on August 15, 2023, in his home town, Leipzig. The HGB Leipzig published an obituary by Stiftung Plakat OST.
As you mention, this book is part of a paperback series by Verlag Tribüne. It was started around 1975. Unfortunately, the publisher didn’t pay close attention to typographic consistency. Many books in the series don’t use Maxima, but actually Adrian Frutiger’s stylistically related Univers (and in at least one case adding Helvetica to the mix as well). In comparison to Univers, Maxima exhibits more “humanist” traits, like an M with splayed legs, a descending J, and larger apertures. Its horizontal proportions are more varied, as in classical Roman capitals. This is evident in the wider C J O Q and also W and, in contrast, the narrower E P S and s.
Here’s another cover from the series that illustrates two additional features that set Maxima apart from other similar sans serifs: its ampersand has a charmingly simple yet uncommon form derived from writing. And, unlike in Univers (or Helvetica, for that matter), the ascenders of lowercase characters like h f k l tower over the caps.