Oswald Bruce Cooper created the typeface, Cooper Black, in 1921 in Chicago. Born in Ohio in 1879, Cooper left home at a young age to enter into an apprenticeship under a printer, and to study at the Frank Holme School of Illustration in Chicago. Studying under the famous Frederic Goudy, Cooper specialized as a hand-lettering artist. After getting into a business based on typography design with Fred Bertsch and his work becoming distinguishable and well-liked, Cooper was commissioned to create a complete series of types based on his hand-lettering. Barnhart Brothers & Spindler (BB&S) produced Cooper's designs. From the family of types came Cooper Black. 



"It’s for far-sighted printers and near-sighted customers,”Oswald Cooper said of the monumental font he created as a display face for advertisements. Its lack of contrast, oversized and curved serifs, and exaggeration of every feature gave the term "heavyweight" a new meaning. At the time, Cooper Black was the blackest and boldest type around, which allowed  it to function in an endless number of ways. Identified as an extra bold roman styled font, graphic designers used the type like it was going out of style. 



​In no time, Cooper Black became the single best-selling type of BB&S and other foundries copied the design and name. A widely popular foundry, American Type Founders, attempted to steal the show with a heavyweight font associated with Goudy. However, Cooper Black was a force to be reckoned with and none of its competitors came close to it. The font's glory days were in the 1920s and 1930s, but a revival of it in the 1970s brought another wave of popularity. Previously used in advertisements, designers now used the type for businesses and in a variety of other ways.

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​The Beach Boys used Cooper Black on the cover of their 1966 album Pet Sounds, which became an iconic and influential use of the type. Among other popular uses of Cooper Black is for the title of Garfield comic books, on the poster for the King Kong movie in 1976, and for the Tootsie Roll candy. (Each example is pictured in the slideshow to the left.) 

Other fonts created by Cooper:

• Boul Mich
• Cooper Old Style
• Dietz Text 
• Packard
• Pompeian Cursive