Neither In, Nor Out by Simon Garfield

HOW A TYPEFACE (THIS ONE) BECAME THE LAST WORD - AND ALL THE LETTERS- IN LITERARY STYLE

in the spring of 2012, the design studio Barnbrook faced an unenviable dilemma: how to brand a product that had spent more than 40 years consciously resisting all branding? The product was David Bowie. More specifically, Jonathan Barnbrook and Jonathan Abbott were tasked with developing a graphic look for the Bowie exhibition due to open at the V&A in London the following year, the summation of a life like no other.

But how best to portray Bowie in a manner both strikingly new and instantly familiar? One answer was colour: the whole look of the show would be awash with orange — the orange of Ziggy Stardust’s hair, the orange of Low. Another solution would be a typeface for the signage needed to guide the visitors through the show and adorn the promotional posters and merchandise. Here, the choice was less obvious. Initial thoughts turned to past album covers (Barnbrook had worked with Bowie on his record sleeve designs since 2002). Perhaps the chunky ITC Zipper typeface suggestive of Hunky Dory, or the spangly 1950s Cristal lettering of Aladdin Sane? But that would have fixed the look to a particular sound and time.

There was brief consideration of using Johnston, but that was forever linked to London’s Underground. The designers experimented with a varied typographic palette in an attempt to reflect all the different elements in the show — photography, costumes, memorabilia, handwritten lyrics. But here again there were problems defining such a visually aware artist: Futura would have suited his early space-bound phase much better than his Let’s Dance period; Times New Roman or Baskerville would have penned him in as a traditionalist, and Bowie was anything but that. And then the designers realised they needed one strong, distinctive visual language to tie everything together. So they chose Albertus.

Looking back now — flipping through the catalogue and those full graphic spreads emblazoned “David Bowie is Forever and Ever”, “David Bowie is Moving like a Tiger on Vaseline”, and the pin-badges in the shop that proclaimed “David Bowie is Turning Us All into Voyeurs” — one wonders how anyone could possibly have chosen anything else. Bowie’s name appears particularly electrifying in the typeface’s capitals: the B that

tapers to a fine point around its belt, the tilting O with its cavernous bowl, and the chiselled E with its angled arms like a warrior facing battle. Its letters are distinguished by a solid warmth and the subtle grounding of its serif legs. It boasts a carved quality, as if it could never be removed once installed. Its slight imperfections withstand digitisation and add to its vulnerability.

The choice of the typeface had an effect far beyond the intentions of the designers. When Bowie died in January 2016, with the exhibition midway through its tour of Barcelona, Tokyo, Melbourne and Brooklyn, Albertus transitioned from being part of his life to his afterlife.

“It’s hard to imagine it now,” Jonathan Abbott says, “but I recall being at a meeting at the museum where concerns were raised that a sponsor might not be found due to the colourful life of its subject. Bowie’s life and work was considered an unconventional subject for a museum show — should it even be in a museum at all? So, it was incumbent on the design to make it clear that, yes, the subject was indeed culturally significant. We wanted to create a vibrant pop object, but we also wanted it to speak with a certain gravitas and I think Albertus helped us do that — echoes of stonecarved lettering making it feel almost monumental.”

Wouldn’t have been the first time. Before Bowie, Albertus had already acquired quite a reputation. On my virtual bookshelf I have: The North Ship by Philip Larkin, The Flame by Leonard Cohen, One Hundred Lyrics and a Poem by Neil Tennant, The Hawk in the Rain by Ted Hughes, American Histories by John Edgar Wideman, Come Rain or Come Shine by Kazuo Ishiguro, The End of the Affair by Graham Greene, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, How to be Invisible by Kate Bush, The Violet Hour by Katie Roiphe, The Entertainer by John Osborne, Preoccupations by Seamus Heaney, May Week Was in June by Clive James, Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter, Mother, Brother, Lover by Jarvis Cocker, Paradise by Edna O’Brien, Mostly Hero by Anna Burns, My Son the Fanatic by Hanif Kureishi, Wrote for Luck by Shaun Ryder, For the Union Dead by Robert Lowell, Music, Sense and Nonsense by Alfred Brendel, Paris Echo by Sebastian Faulks, The Silence of