Jethro Tull – “Inside” / “Alive and Well and Living In” German single cover
Contributed by Fonts In Use Staff on Nov 21st, 2021. Artwork published in
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“Inside” b/w “Alive and Well and Living In” is a single from Jethro Tull’s 1970 album Benefit. The sleeve for the German release on Island Records features a photo printed in magenta and cyan, depicting the band members as indistinct shadowy figures. The text is set in the all-caps bottom-heavy Orbit and printed in yellow, with the band’s name shown in red.
1 Comment on “Jethro Tull – “Inside” / “Alive and Well and Living In” German single cover”
This is our earliest documented appearance of Orbit to this date. Orbit is similar to Ed Benguiat’s Village, which came out in 1968 and is distinguished by flared stems, an R with diagonal leg, and a T without tail. While Village was exclusively available to customers of Photo-Lettering in New York, Orbit reached a much wider dissemination.
The origin and release date of Orbit is uncertain, but it appears in a Fürst catalog (1970, with Inline style), and also in catalogs by Mecanorma (1973), Berthold (1974, with Facsimile Fonts credits), Hollenstein (1974), Lettergraphics (1976) and others. Since the shown sleeve was printed in Germany, Fürst – a typesetting company with offices in Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, and Düsseldorf – is a likely source. I doubt that they originated typeface designs themselves, though.