The booklet, NYT Mag Type, has been produced through Newspaper Club and features examples of the magazine’s sans and serif faces, alongside a wide selection of more expressive type designs created for specific issues.

As Design Director Gail Bichler writes in the introduction, the design of the NYT Magazine does not rely on ornamentation, but instead comes out of the words contained inside its pages – “the stories and ideas those words represent. Typography gives tone and voice to those words”.

As part of the Magazine’s redesign that was carried out two years ago, Henrik Kubel of A2-Type was commissioned to create a suite of custom typefaces – “serif and sans serif fonts that felt unique and modern,” writes Bichler.

The team also worked up a condensed font that was inspired by Stymie, a slab serif that the NYT magazine had used for decades. The publication includes many examples of Kubel’s work and also of bespoke type created by the magazine’s art department.

Some of the individual letters may even be recognisable to readers and fans of the Magazine’s design work – such as the ‘L’ from the LA Noir issue and the tall lowercase ‘g’ from the New York Above 800ft issue.

The real proof of the Magazine’s success is in its weekly printed issues, but this booklet (and the TDC show) go some way to demonstrate the power of its custom fonts – how they can become a key part of a title’s visual identity while expressing the uniqueness of both the voices and the writing within.

The New York Times Magazine – Type: 2015-Present is at the Type Director’s Club, 347 West 36th in New York until 5 September. The exhibition is free and open to the public Monday to Friday, 9am to 4pm by appointment only (call 212-633-8943 or email director@tdc.org). See tdc.org