Cooper Black

Cooper Black is a heavily weighted, old style serif typeface designed by Oswald Bruce Cooper in 1921 and released by the Barnhart Brothers & Spindler type foundry in 1922. The typeface is drawn as an extra bold weight of Cooper Old Style. Though not based on a single historic model, Cooper Black exhibits influences of Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and the Machine Age. Cooper Black was a predominant lettering style popularized by Oswald Bruce Cooper in Chicago and the Midwest of America in the 1920s, given typographic form. An earlier weight of Cooper's type designs, Cooper Old Style (later just "Cooper") was released first, though Cooper Black was what BB&S foundry was after. Cooper Black was advertised as being "for far-sighted printers with near-sighted customers", as well as "the Black Menace" by detractors.

Cooper Hilite

Cooper Hilite is a version of Cooper Black originally designed by painting white relief impressions into a printed proof of Cooper Black. A messy version was released by the Russian type foundry Paratype in 1993. A detailed version that is a direct digital rendering of 'Oz' Cooper's original was released by the Wordshape type foundry in 2010. The Wordshape version is accompanied by a copy of Cooper Black that can be used to fill the incised spaces of Cooper Hilite with color via layering.