The Harder They Come by Michael Thelwell

Michael Thelwell’s The Harder They Come is a novelization of the cult film of the same title, telling the story of real-life Jamaican outlaw and folk hero Ivanhoe “Rhyging” Martin. The book by the Jamaican-American author was published in 1980, eight years after the film came out.

The jacket design by VanZee Associates depicts a worn copy of the poster issued by Island Records to promote the soundtrack album. For the title, the designers used Superstar Shadow. This style is part of a pair of “college” sans serifs with octagonal rounds, designed by Colin Brignall for Letraset in 1970, together with the solid and contoured Superstar. As far as I can tell, Superstar and Superstar Shadow weren’t made to be combined in layers, though. At least in URW’s digital version, their proportions don’t quite match up, irrespective of whether the contour is included or not. Chances are that the red letter bodies were filled in manually.

There is a digital version of Superstar currently sold by Monotype via their ITC label, but it doesn’t include the Shadow style. The digitizations by URW and Elsner+Flake do include it, but they appear to be discontinued.