October 16, 2007

TYPEFACES OF DEATH

What better way to list my top 5 favorite horror flicks than to display their titles as they appear on the title screens of their respective films? You're right, there are probably scads of better ways, but this is the one I'm sticking with. And just to push the geekiness level to the maximum, I've also done my best to identify the typefaces (aka fonts) that were used. So here we go, in no particular order...

Font: Serif Gothic Extra Bold

Font: Carbono
Probably just Helvetica with an outline (see comments)

Font: Franklin Gothic Demi

Font: Gill Sans (or something close)

Font: Helvetica
(Incidentally, Kubrick's self-proclaimed favourite typeface was Futura Extra Bold)

Analysis:
80% of my top 5 favorite horror movies use a white title on a solid black background.

60% utilize their "official" typeface (the same one from the posters and other marketing paraphernalia). For some reason I've always thought that it's kind of cool when movies don't use their official typeface on their title screen. (A fact probably best kept to myself.)

20% employ a serifed font.

100% of this post is utterly useless information.

9 comments:

The CDP. said...

I also like it when a film's title screen doesn't use same the fonts and packaging as all of its promotional material. I find it interesting for some reason.

Poltergeist is the scariest PG-rated movie ever. Period.

Anonymous said...

It took me years, but I finally figured out the font that John Carpenter used on so many of his movies back in the 1980s. I can't remember what it is right now, but I know it's somewhere in my font folder on my PC.

Sparkle Plenty said...

Excellent top scary movies, and it's cool to see the fonts.

These are some of the toughest movie spooks to battle. My weapons of choice to battle monsters--GladeTM air freshener and my vaudeville routine--might only work on Jack Nicholson.

Devlin Thompson said...

Speaking of typography in film, have you seen this?
http://www.ms-studio.com/typecasting.html

Anonymous said...

Your font ID skills are exemplary- but I would actually bet that the Poltergeist font is merely Helvetica that has been given a "stroke" around it- but then, Carbono looks much like Helvetica with a stroke on it. This is the nerd in me coming out, but I looked up Carbono, and found out Paulo W (from Brasil) designed Carbono in 2005, and much too late to the title page of Poltergeist.

I will always be a fan of Pablo Ferro's hand-drawn title typography for Dr. Strangelove.

Travis said...

You got me!

Kirk D. said...

cdp- yeah, I wonder why that is. It's sort of like "now that you've paid for the movie, you can see the REAL way the title's supposed to be" or something

retropolitan- And now all those years are wasted! Now I'm curious as to what it was.

sparkle- interesting weapon choices. Interesting and completely baffling.

devlin- very enjoyable link. I hadn't seen that. Thanks for posting.

travis- Yes, but you must be unaware that Paulo W actually created that font in 1981 for Steven Spielberg and.. ok, that's not true, you win. I actually love the fact that you looked that up.

Anonymous said...

Nice blog , but slightly too AR,
I was just wondering if you wear a black polo neck jumper as standard everyday wear .... all the v a retentive typographers and sim., I deal with in the UK do .. just wondering if it is an iternational Typo A retent., fashion item ;)

Anonymous said...

I'm pretty sure the POLTERGEIST font is Berthold's AG Book.