ITC Style vs Push Pin Style
ITC様式 / プッシュピン・スタイル
ITC Style comes from Type Classification and Push Pin Style from Illustration Styles. Both are read here as style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
ITC Style
New York in the phototype era produced a style of huge x-heights and tightly packed settings. Lubalin's conceptual typography and U&lc magazine staged letters as pictures and gave the period its face.
Push Pin Style
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Glaser and Chwast's studio worked as the counterpoint to Swiss rationalism, building an illustration-led eclecticism out of historical styles, comics and popular prints. Fat contours and ornamental planes of color repainted the magazines and records of the 1960s and 70s.
| ITC Style | Push Pin Style | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1970s–1980s | 1954–1980s |
| Family | Type Classification | Illustration Styles |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Huge x-heights / Tight-not-touching settings / Swashes and ligatures on stage / Letters as image | Eclectic historical revival / Fat contours, ornamental color / Illustration-led composition / Wit and quotation |
| Best used for | Magazine feature openers where the headline itself must stand as an image · Cosmetics and music advertising giving the shape of a word gloss and lift | Magazine feature openers and record sleeves led by the illustration · Posters and brand imagery for theatres, bookshops and food that trade on wit |
| Type | A large x-height face packed tight, with ligatures and swashes worked in | Display faces from the same period as the image, curved to its edge |
| Composition | The headline massed into a few lines, leading closed to make one shape | Image at the center with type following the gaps it leaves |
| Material | Printed as flat color on glossy stock that tightens the letter edges | Flat fields of muted secondary color inside heavy contours |
| Caution | Tracking pushed until the letters touch turns the line into pattern rather than reading and the headline stops working. | Choosing a historical style without the wit that justifies it turns quotation into plain nostalgia and makes the eclecticism look like a pile. |