My Type of Music Special: Fonts From The Flea Market

One of my favourite weekend treats is Fonts From The Flea Market, an ongoing typographic journey of discovery posted on the Twitter account of Swiss graphic design studio Büro Destruct. Lorenz "Lopetz" Gianfreda started the series four years ago while browsing countless used 7" vinyl singles at a flea market in the French part of Switzerland. In the days when music was still sold as a physical, tangible product, record sleeves provided original typefaces with a great platform to catch the potential record buyer's attention. Hunting down those imaginative type designs at flea markets and second hand shops became a source of inspiration and visceral pleasure for Lopetz. The type maniac and font designer started photographing them and sharing them with like-minded people, and the series was born. The collection currently holds over 800 images and is truly fascinating.

Compu-retro

Lopetz | "For the four years and more than 800 sleeves that I posted, I get often asked two questions – "Are you on flea markets every weekend?" and "Do you buy/collect/own these records?" The answer to both of them is "No". I simply take pictures with my mobile, crop the images and slightly fix their quality. On Saturdays I post three of these font finds – taken sometimes months ago – on Twitter and also push them into the Fonts From The Flea Market Flickr set."

Mobley

Lopetz | "I do collect some records, but I get them mostly for the music, not for the type. It would be cool to release a little book with the collection some day. Publishers are always welcome to contact me."

In the meantime you can enjoy the musical typographic extravaganza on Twitter and Flickr.

ITC Bottleneck

Broadway & Lazybones

Jackson & Candice

ITC Pioneer No. 2

Psychedelia