Cooper Black

Many t-shirts today still use Cooper Black. Most popular example being

the "Vote for Pedro" t-shirt from the movie, "Napoleon Dynamite."

A few album covers in the 1970's

found use for the font as well.

Most notable, the music group,

"The Doors."

In conclusion, Cooper Black is

still used by designers today and can be dowloaded from Adobe for 35 dollars and free downloads often get removed due to copyright issues.

In 1984, the font became favored by t-shirt designers and small business owners.

As mentioned earlier, the music of the 60's is what Cooper Black is most known for as it has the ideal look for the sound and culture of the time.

The most recent popular use of Cooper Black is yet another album cover by the Rock Duo "The Black Keys" in 2010.

One of the most popular uses for Cooper Black would be album covers in the 1960's.

Cooper Black fit the soulful

mood of the time's music, hence it's heavy usage.

Which opens a window for

us to gloss over the font's

entire history.

As stated by Oz Cooper, the font fit the needs of "Far-sighted printers with near-sighted customers."

Which brings us to the font's usage...

Usage

Cooper Black's boldness and rounded serifs makes it viable for headings.

As for body text, not so much.

Cooper Black's popularity

had faded until its rebirth

in 1966 When used on The Peach Boys' album cover for "Pet Sounds."

Notable examples:

Origin

Cooper Black is used here on the cover of this Garfield book. Note the title being presented as bold, important but also fun.

References

Cooper Black was designed in 1919 by Oswald Bruce Cooper.

He was the co-owner of the

Bertsch-Cooper design firm located

in Chicago.

History

Color changes of course can varie for the sake of establishing mood, such as this more grim usage.

Origin, usage and history

• https://typekit.com/fonts/cooper-black-std
• http://fontsinuse.com/typefaces/7357/cooper-black
• http://www.bluecotton.com/visual-history-cooper-black

Legal download

• https://typekit.com/fonts/cooper-black-std

Removed illegal download

• http://www.fontpalace.com/font-details/Cooper+Black/

After its release in 1922, the font was mostly used in advertising but most critics of the time disliked Cooper Black, nicknaming it, "The Black Menace."

Cooper Black was later released for the first time by the Barnhart Brothers & Spindler foundry of Chicago in 1922.

In 1940, Oz Cooper died

of cancer leaving the font

up for grabs.

During the 1990's,

Cooper Black was used in various airline

brandings. All of which were smaller airlines.

Cooper Black Font

By Kyle Cherby

Despite criticism, the font

became popular enough to

spawn knockoff copied versions of it, which lead to Cooper's attempt to patent the font in 1930, but was unsuccessful.