Nirvana font

Where the Onyx answer comes from

In an "Anatomy of a logo" feature, Wallpaper* tells how Lisa Orth designed the cover of Bleach, Nirvana's 1989 debut album on Sub Pop. She asked Grant Alden, a colleague at the Seattle music paper The Rocket, to set the band name in whatever font had just been used on the typesetting machine. That font was Onyx, which the magazine calls a blocky serif display face. It suited the cover photo so well that it became the band's logo, and it returned on In Utero in 1993. The article adds that the band's "Satan Worshippin'" T-shirts use a slightly different, more Bodoni-like version with flipped N's.

A second account names Bodoni

KEXP, the radio station, tells the same story in its series on Sub Pop's design history. It describes Grant Alden as the typesetter at The Rocket and says he set the band name and album title in the type already loaded in the machine. In this version the face is called Bodoni Extra Bold Condensed. KEXP says the logo was born entirely by accident. So the two accounts agree on how the logo was made, but not on the name of the font.

About Onyx

Fonts In Use lists Onyx as a design by Gerry Powell, released by American Type Founders in 1937. Lanston Monotype also made it, and digital versions come from Monotype and Adobe. The same page warns that Bitstream's Onyx is a different face, related to Poster Bodoni Compressed. So one name covers more than one design, and neither account says which version was in The Rocket's machine.

How to get the look

Use very tall, narrow capitals with strong thick-and-thin contrast and flat, hairline serifs. Set the word in capitals with tight but even spacing. Keep it plain: the original is flat type with no effects, often yellow or white on black. If you have a licence for Onyx, that is the closest option. For a free route, Abril Fatface has the same contrast but is much wider; Anton gives the tall, condensed shape without serifs.

Common questions