Cooper Black is an ultra-bold seriftypeface intended for display use that was designed by Oswald Bruce Cooper and released by the Barnhart Brothers & Spindler type foundry in 1922.[1] The typeface was drawn as an extra-bold weight of Cooper's "Cooper Old Style" family. It rapidly became a standard typeface and was licensed by American Type Founders and also copied by many other manufacturers of printing systems.[2][3][4]
Cooper Black followed on from Cooper's career as a lettering artist in Chicago and the Midwest of America in the 1920s.[3][7][8] Cooper Black was advertised as being "for far-sighted printers with near-sighted customers", as well as "the Black Menace" by detractors.[9] While very bold, Cooper Black is based on traditional "old-style" serif lettering, rather than the hard-edged "fat face" fonts popular in the nineteenth century, giving it a soft, 'muddy' appearance, with relatively low contrast between thick and thin strokes.[6][10][11][12]
Cooper Hilite is a version of Cooper Black originally designed by painting white relief impressions into a printed proof of Cooper Black.[3] It has been digitized by ParaType and Wordshape.[13]
Cooper Black was immediately popular and spawned imitations, including Goudy Heavy Face from Frederic Goudy, Ludlow Black and Pabst Extra Bold.[14][15] Cooper Black remains popular: the editors of the typography discussion website Fonts in Use report more submissions of its use than any other face that is not a sans-serif, although outnumbered by Times New Roman once its many variants are added up.[16]
Many unusual versions of Cooper were created in the phototypesetting period of the 1960s and 1970s, a period of explosion in the production of display faces. These included "Ziptop Cooper Black" from Photo Lettering Inc., a version with the top bolder than the bottom, and other distorted variants.[17]
Many digitisations of Cooper Black exist from companies including Bitstream, Adobe and others.[12] Soap, designed by Ray Larabie of Typodermic, is a uni-case variant.[18] A version from URW, which does not include an italic, is bundled with many Microsoft products.[19] Cooper Old Style has been digitised by URW.[20]
Miles Newlyn designed the New Kansas typeface, based on the Cooper Black typeface.[21]
Cooper Black compared to Cooper's earlier Cooper Old Style. This was a quirky variation on the old-style serif model, similar to Cooper's lettering and predominantly intended for display and advertising use.
Goudy Heavy, a metal-type competitor commissioned by Monotype from Cooper's former lettering teacher, Frederic Goudy.
^ abLewis, Amanda Cooper Black: The Story Behind Louie's Typeface, laweekly.com, August 6, 2012 quote: "didn't truly hit the world over the head until it graced the cover of the Beach Boys' classic 1966 album, Pet Sounds. For the next decade Cooper Black slowly asserted pop culture supremacy, making notable appearances on The Bob Newhart Show, The Odd Couple, 1976's remake of King Kong, The Sting, The Doors' L.A. Woman, “Garfield,” Tootsie Rolls, National Lampoon magazine, David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust, M*A*S*H and Diff'rent Strokes, along with less notable appearances on an unbelievable number of signs, packages, labels, T-shirts and advertisements. (..) has become shorthand for late-'60s/early-'70s nostalgia, as in The Black Keys' “Brothers” or Wet Hot American Summer"
Allan Haley. Typographic Milestones. John Wiley and Sons: September 1992. ISBN978-0-471-28894-7.
Blackwell, Lewis. 20th Century Type. Yale University Press: 2004. ISBN0-300-10073-6.
Fiedl, Frederich, Nicholas Ott and Bernard Stein. Typography: An Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Through History. Black Dog & Leventhal: 1998. ISBN1-57912-023-7.
Jaspert, W. Pincus, W. Turner Berry and A.F. Johnson. The Encyclopedia of Type Faces. Blandford Press Lts.: 1953, 1983. ISBN0-7137-1347-X.
