Cooper Black

---

title: "Cooper Black" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["display-typefaces", "typefaces-and-fonts-introduced-in-1922", "letterpress-typefaces", "photocomposition-typefaces", "digital-typefaces", "art-nouveau-typefaces", "art-deco"] description: "Ultra-bold serif typeface" topic_path: "general/display-typefaces" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper_Black" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Ultra-bold serif typeface ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox font"]

Field	Value
name	Cooper Black
image	Cooper Black Std.png
style	Serif
releasedate	1922
classifications	Old style
creator	Oswald Bruce Cooper
foundry	Barnhart Brothers & Spindler
foundries	American Type Founders, Adobe Inc., Mergenthaler Linotype, Bitstream Inc., Monotype Imaging
::

| name = Cooper Black | image = Cooper Black Std.png | style = Serif | releasedate = 1922 | classifications = Old style | creator = Oswald Bruce Cooper | foundry = Barnhart Brothers & Spindler | foundries = American Type Founders, Adobe Inc., Mergenthaler Linotype, Bitstream Inc., Monotype Imaging ::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Oswald_Cooper.jpg" caption="Oswald Cooper."] ::

Cooper Black is an ultra-bold serif typeface intended for display use that was designed by Oswald Bruce Cooper and released by the Barnhart Brothers & Spindler type foundry in 1922. 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.

History ==

Cooper Black originated from Oswald Cooper's career as a lettering artist in Chicago and the Midwest of America in the 1920s. Cooper Black was advertised as being "for far-sighted printers with near-sighted customers", as well as "the Black Menace" by detractors. 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.

Usage ==

After its release in 1922, Cooper Black quickly became a popular typeface for use in advertising, especially in newspapers. Although its use in advertising declined in the 1960s, it became much more popular in pop culture after appearing on the cover art for the 1966 album Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys. Since then, it has been featured on multiple other album covers, including David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust and the Doors' L.A. Woman. The alternative hip-hop collective Odd Future also used it frequently, using it for album covers such as the cover of The OF Tape Vol. 2. Former Odd Future member Tyler, the Creator used it for his Bastard and Goblin album covers.

Cooper Hilite

Cooper Hilite is a version of Cooper Black originally designed by painting white relief impressions into a printed proof of Cooper Black. It has been digitized by ParaType and Wordshape.

Imitations and variants

Cooper Black was immediately popular and spawned imitations, including Goudy Heavy Face from Frederic Goudy, Ludlow Black and Pabst Extra Bold. 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.

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.

Many digitisations of Cooper Black exist from companies including Bitstream, Adobe and others. Soap, designed by Ray Larabie of Typodermic, is a uni-case variant. A version from URW, which does not include an italic, is bundled with many Microsoft products. Cooper Old Style has been digitised by URW.

Miles Newlyn designed the New Kansas typeface, based on the Cooper Black typeface.

Owen Earl digitized the original Cooper family as Cooper*.

Gallery

File:Cooper Hilite (8294409652).jpg|A specimen sheet of Cooper Hilite. File:Cooper Old Style sample image.png|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. File:Goudy Heavy sample.jpg|Goudy Heavy, a metal-type competitor commissioned by Monotype from Cooper's former lettering teacher, Frederic Goudy. File:Pet Sounds.jpg|Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys (1966)

References

References

1. "Cooper Black".
2. Neil Macmillan. (2006). "An A–Z of Type Designers". Yale University Press.
3. "Telling and selling".
4. "The Complete History of the Cooper Black Font in Hip-Hop".
5. "The Golden Age of Hand Lettering in American Advertising".
6. (1937). "Chicago Letter Founding". Black Cat Press.
7. Steven Heller. (6 May 2014). "Design Literacy: Understanding Graphic Design". Allworth Press.
8. "Fat faces". Graphic Design and Publishing Centre.
9. (3 January 2014). "The Story of Our Friend, the Fat Face".
10. "Cooper".
11. (18 June 2020). "Why this font is everywhere". Vox.
12. (6 August 2012). "Cooper Black: The Story Behind Louie's Typeface". LA Weekly.
13. (10 April 2017). "Just my type: how Cooper Black became 2017's most fashionable font". The Guardian.
14. "Cooper Hilite".
15. "Letters of Credit".
16. "Font Family Page".
17. "Ziptop Cooper Black".
18. (October 29, 2024). "Soap".
19. "Cooper Black".
20. "Cooper Old Style". URW.
21. "New Kansas".
22. "New Kansas".

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::