---
title: "Cooper Black (1922) — Oswald Bruce Cooper"
description: "Cooper Black was designed by Oswald Bruce Cooper in 1922. What it signals, where you have seen it."
url: https://atoneplace.net/font/cooper-black/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Cooper Black

**Cooper Black: Oswald Bruce Cooper, 1922**

Display · The 1970s, unmistakably. Soft, heavy, friendly, slightly stoned.

Cooper Black is a 1920s typeface that became so associated with the 1970s that using it now is a period reference whether you mean it or not. Its blurred, rounded serifs were designed to survive bad printing, and the effect is warmth. It has had at least three separate revivals as nostalgia cycles came round.

## The facts

- **Designed by:** Oswald Bruce Cooper
- **Released:** 1922
- **Classification:** Display
- **What it signals now:** The 1970s, unmistakably. Soft, heavy, friendly, slightly stoned.

## Where you have seen it

- The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds
- Garfield
- easyJet
- Countless 1970s album covers

## Other typefaces from the 1920s

| Typeface | Year | Designer | What it signals |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Futura | 1927 | Paul Renner | Bauhaus modernism, and then anything wanting to look confident and geometric. |
| Gill Sans | 1928 | Eric Gill | Britain, mid-century. Railways, the BBC, Penguin paperbacks. |

> This page describes the typeface rather than showing it. Displaying a specimen requires a licensed font file and almost none of these may be redistributed, so the descriptions name the letters to look at instead.

## Common questions

### Who designed Cooper Black?

Oswald Bruce Cooper, in 1922.

### What is Cooper Black used for?

The 1970s, unmistakably. Soft, heavy, friendly, slightly stoned. You will have seen it on The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, Garfield, easyJet.

## Related pages

- [Typefaces from the 1920s](https://atoneplace.net/font/decade/1920s/)
- [Impact](https://atoneplace.net/font/impact/)
- [Papyrus](https://atoneplace.net/font/papyrus/)
- [Comic Sans](https://atoneplace.net/font/comic-sans/)

## Sources

- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (https://www.wikidata.org/) [CC0 1.0]