This special “bonus track” edition of Double Acts in Pop: An Incomplete Survey (the first comprehensive type specimen from Commercial Type in nearly a decade, featuring their full library in a compact paperback format), is banded together with Commercial Type Collected Ephemera, a new 64-page booklet that documents some of the unconventional ways that the foundry has promoted their typefaces over the years: neon, billboards, wheatpaste, and spray paint.

Keen experimenters with both the form and content of type specimens, Commercial Type co-founders Paul Barnes and Christian Schwartz find the often nonsensical texts in specimens to be a missed opportunity. This has inspired their ongoing series of type specimens that are designed to be as engaging to read as they are to look at.

Double Acts in Pop is their latest effort in this vein. Barnes and Schwartz invited Molly Lambert, an LA-based journalist and former MTV podcaster who has written for Pitchfork, to tease apart the dynamics of some of the most iconic pop duos to understand what made these celebrated double acts flourish or flop.

Ardent fans of pop music, Barnes and Schwartz reflect on their twenty-year creative partnership in their foreword to Double Acts in Pop and discuss how they have drawn inspiration from bands and record labels to shape Commercial Type.

New York-based designer Chris Wu had free rein on the design, giving each spread its own layout and showcasing the entire Commercial Type library. The specimen is a buoyant fusion of content and form: irreverent, opinionated, and exhilarating.

Double Acts in Pop: An Incomplete Survey
Designed by Chris Wu, Wkshps
Softcover, 267 pages, b&w, 4.25 × 7 inches
ISBN: 979-8-21-851955-1

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Commercial Type: Collected Ephemera
Cover designed by Chris Wu, Wkshps
Book design by Commercial Type
Softcover, 64 pages, full color, 4.25 × 7 inches