Within Temptation – Bleed Out album art, singles and collateral

Bleed Out is the eighth studio album by Dutch metal band Within Temptation, released on 20 October 2023. A tour of the same name will start in 2024, with shows in Latin America and Europe. From Wikipedia:

The album marks the first time the band opted for releasing a full record without the support of a major record label. Musically, the record incorporates elements from symphonic metal, gothic metal, metalcore, and djent. Lyrically, the band approached themes related to freedom. They addressed subjects such as war, oppression, women’s rights, religion, bullying, and inner-struggles.

The album and the two latest singles were designed by Frank Burghout of Voutloos (and formerly of M-Design Wormerveer), with artwork by Anato Finnstark and photography by Tim Tronckoe.

Burghout combined two interesting typefaces. The one used for the band name is called Narwa. This “robust medieval-modernist display type” was drawn by Lewis McGuffie of East of Rome, inspired by “a combination of Rudolf Koch style lettering, some old book covers and a masthead from a printed tour guide of Narva, Estonia.” It caught my eye when McGuffie made a beta version available in January 2022 via Future Fonts. Narwa then already spanned eight weights and also came as variable font. The typeface family was finalized in October 2023, now with support for extended Latin and Cyrillic. Make sure to read Identifont’s latest blog post: it includes an interview in which the designer provides some insight into the process. McGuffie reveals that he started with the bold uppercase characters, as he’s found that “graphic designers often just use all-caps in the designs”. Case in point: Narwa is here used in all caps, too, featuring its whimsical W with the vertical middle part, the characteristic asymmetrical A and M, and the round uncial E.

The low-contrast sans used for the titles – also in capitals – is worth a closer look, too. It’s English Egyptian, a digital interpretation of William Caslon’s Two Lines English Egyptian of 1816, which arguably is the first sans-serif printing type to be sold commercially. Conceived by Adrien Vasquez and John Morgan, it was released by Abyme in 2017. Just last week, Abyme published a slightly revised and newly illustrated version of “Caslon’s Egyptian: the first sanserif type” by James Mosley. This essay was first printed by I.M. Imprimit in a pamphlet produced for a visit by members of the Arbeitskreis Druckgeschichte in 1988.

In addition to Narwa and English Egyptian, the tour posters and graphics use Daubenton. I don’t know if these were designed by Burghout as well. Daubenton is a caps-only design by Olivier Dolbeau, reviving the engraved letters seen of the façade of the Grande Galerie de l’Évolution of Paris’s Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle.

[More info on Discogs]