Monday June 16, 2008 / Filed under: Son of Typecasting
Indiana Jones and the Fonts on the Maps
In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, there is a funny scene in which Indy’s father breaks a vase over Indy’s head. As soon as he does it, he looks horrified—not because he’s mistakenly attacked his own son, but because he notices that it was a priceless Ming vase. Upon closer examination, he is relieved to discover the vase is a fake.
Now that the fourth (and last?) Indiana Jones movie is out, I made a similar examination of the use of type in the series, but I was not quite as relieved. For the most part, the type usage in each of the movies is correct for the period depicted. With one exception: The maps used in the travel montages.
Whenever Indy is traveling great distances, which happens in all the films, there is a montage of the airplane or boat superimposed over an animated map showing the route. It’s an old-fashioned convention, an homage to the movies of the Thirties and Forties. Unfortunately, the typefaces would be more at home a few decades later.
In Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) which is set in 1936, we see ITC Serif Gothic (designed in 1972). The wide spacing feels right, and it does have an art deco feel, but it’s 1970s art deco.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) strays even further in the anachronistic type department by using Helvetica (1957), which looks even less plausible than Serif Gothic.
The third installment, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), goes back to the formula used in the first film in many ways, including the use of ITC Serif Gothic again on the map. Not appropriate for a film set in 1938, either.
Did they finally get it right in the fourth film, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)? Not quite. They didn’t use Serif Gothic this time, or even Helvetica (which would just have been released in 1957, the year in which the film is set). Instead, they used Century Gothic, a font that didn’t exist until 1989. This wouldn’t necessarily be a problem since Century Gothic’s caps are very similar to Futura, which would be perfectly appropriate for 1957. Unfortunately, Century Gothic is also a clone of Avant Garde (1970), a typeface with very large lowercase letters, a quintessentially Seventies characteristic. (More about Century Gothic here.) So, not the best choice.
Friday January 6, 2006 / Filed under: Son of Typecasting
Meet the Fockers
I wish I could claim credit for finding this gem, but I haven’t even seen this movie (I hear it’s very funny, though). The font shown in the airport sign is the old Macintosh system font Chicago. Historically speaking, it’s possible, but an extremely unlikely font choice for a major airport, even one located in Chicago. Matt Soar spotted this and wrote about it on his blog. He also has written about typographical oddities in HBO’s Deadwood and the movie Paycheck. Good eye, Matt!
Sunday January 1, 2006 / Filed under: Son of Typecasting
Good Article, Shame About "Good Night"
I was very happy to be included in a short article in today’s New York Times (Good Film, Shame About the Helvetica) about designers who notice anachronistic font choices in films, but I was a bit taken aback when I received an email first thing this morning from the art director of Good Night, And Good Luck. She pointed out that Helvetica was not used in the film, contrary to what was claimed in the article. She said, rather, that the sign shown in the example frame was set in Akzidenz Grotesk, a face which predated (and in fact was the basis for) Helvetica, and that this choice was based on extensive research of CBS’s graphic design during the period depicted in the film.
This is no skin off my nose since I have not made any comments (yet) about the use of type in Good Night, And Good Luck. The comment was made by graphic designer and fellow font flub finder Michael Bierut, who, along with Scott Stowell and myself, is quoted in the article. Judging from the still shown in the article, I might have come to the same conclusion. As it happens, I missed the film when it was in theaters and will have to wait for the DVD release to see for myself.
If what she says is true (and she was very adamant about it), it is very unfortunate that Good Night, And Good Luck was chosen as the lead example in the article. Especially since its art director appears to be one of the rare people working in film who cares about getting the type details right.
Update: Thanks to some detective work by Stephen Coles, as reported at The Design Observer and Typophile.com, it has been confirmed that Good Night, And Good Luck really does use Akzidenz Grotesk.
Friday November 11, 2005 / Filed under: Son of Typecasting
Typographic Prop Masters
In my Typecasting article and Son of Typecasting here in the Notebook section, I hold films under the spotlight and (sometimes) make fun of their use of type. But what about the dedicated few who go that extra mile to create historically accurate typographic props—books, tickets, posters, newspapers, drivers’ licenses, legal documents, and so on—for movies?
Shortly after posting Typecasting on my website a few years ago, I heard from Andrew Leman (www.ahleman.com) who has made a career of forging printed ephemera for movies. He also makes and sells digital fonts based on historical references, many of which were created for use in props. Although it’s not exactly a movie prop, I really love his ElectriClerk which looks like something out of Brazil, and it actually works.
My friend David Steinlicht recently brought to my attention the work of Ross MacDonald (ross-macdonald.com). I’ve known of his work as an illustrator for years, but I had no idea he made props. Turns out, Ross is a letterpress aficionado and actually prints and binds some of his props using traditional printing and bookmaking techniques. Aging is one of his tricks and it’s shocking to read how he abuses some of his beautiful creations to make them look convincingly old and worn.
Thursday October 6, 2005 / Filed under: Son of Typecasting
Gangs of New York
I’ve always had a rather vague grasp on the history of New York City. So, before taking a trip there this last summer, I rented Gangs of New York (Miramax, 2002), hoping to learn some of it. I realize the film is not perfectly historically accurate, but I really enjoyed watching it. Scorsese did a wonderful job with the story, the characters, and the setting, making me feel like I had stepped into New York City of the 1860s. However, as I’ve come to expect with Hollywood movies, the typography was a bit off base.
For the most part, the type choices in Gangs of New York are plausible in terms of general feel. In many cases, common 19th century wood type designs are used, especially on posters, appropriately enough, though some of these look a bit too distressed, as if they were enlarged from microfilm copies or something. Most of the signs on buildings were right on the money. I thought this one was pretty good:
On the other hand, the movie is riddled with anachronistic type choices. Here are some examples from posters:
Here we see Bernhard Antique (1937) with two overly-distressed-looking 19th century wood types. Notice the straight apostrophe in the bottom line. Straight apostrophes and quote marks did not exist in typefaces until the advent of digital type in the 1980s. It’s a computer thing, not a typographic thing.
More wood type, but the second line (“Harry Watkins”) is set in Aachen (1969).
This one is set in URW Egyptienne (1950s) and ITC Benguiat (1977). Benguiat is a particularly poor choice since it is based on the Art Nouveau style of around 1900. Benguiat shows up on a couple more posters in the movie.
This is better, but not 100% historically correct. The bold font next to the pointing finger is Memphis (1930s).
Here we have some artificially condensed Americana (1967) with Memphis (1930s) again. You couldn’t distort type by condensing it like this back then. It was made of wood or metal, after all.
Now this is interesting. Avenir (1988) carved in marble. Few typefaces say “1860s” less than Avenir, which means “future” in French. It would actually be quite an evocative choice for a film set in the early 2000s. It’s very popular these days.
On to the printed ephemera, starting with newspapers:
Good old (actually not so old) Memphis, again, paired with Caledonia (1940). I should point out that the way they set the type here looks right; it’s just the font choices that are wrong. There were typefaces back then that looked generally similar to these to the untrained eye, but not exactly like these.
The same comments go for this one. The sans serif is Helvetica (1957) and the serif font is Egyptienne (1956).
This one I love. It’s a civil war draft registration ticket. The heading is set in Futura (1927) and the text is set in Garamond (c. 1920). Now, you might say Garamond should be okay because the original Garamond types were from the 1500s, which predates the 1860s. The fact is, they were only used in the 1500s and similar types were not seen again until they were revived around 1920. I’m not sure about that handwriting at the bottom, either.
So. A great movie, but a bit flawed in the typographic department. Three out of five stars for use of type.
Monday March 14, 2005 / Filed under: Son of Typecasting
What is an incorrectly specified font?
Eagle-eyed type nerds watching a recent broadcast of the Jeopardy game show will have fallen off their chairs at this font faux pas.
The correct response to this clue was “What is a font?” but note that the font used for the word ARIAL is in fact Helvetica. Oops. And it was such a clever idea to set the clues in the named fonts.
Tuesday August 17, 2004 / Filed under: Son of Typecasting
Royal Tenenbaum's World of Futura
Quite a few people wrote me to ask about the type in The Royal Tenenbaums (2001). The type isn’t anachronistic so much as idiosyncratic. Director Wes Anderson seems to have a thing, bordering on obsession, for Futura. The credits are set in Futura Bold—nothing strange about that. But it doesn’t stop there. The Tenenbaums seem to exist in a world dominated by Futura (mainly Futura Bold):
On buses:
At the hospital:
More buses (slanted this time):
For a cruise line (notice it’s called Royal Arctic):
At the museum (Medium weight instead of Bold):
On posters (Margot Tenenbaum seems to favor Medium):
Yet, as much as Futura is used in the movie, a few other typefaces make their appearances. Interestingly, it is usually in connection to someone or something outside the Tenenbaum family and is usually Helvetica:
On Raleigh St. Clair’s books:
On Henry Sherman’s book:
A curious (and possibly significant) exception to this pattern is on the cover of a book supposedly written in the 1970s by Royal Tenenbaum’s wife, Etheline. The typeface is Milano, a quintessentially 1970s choice:
I give The Royal Tenenbaums five out of five stars for its use of type, not because it’s perfectly chosen for the period it depicts (though, as far as that goes, it is), but because Anderson has used type in such an integral way in the film. (I also happen to like Wes Anderson films a lot.)
Thursday July 15, 2004 / Filed under: Son of Typecasting
Yeah, But Those Two Guys Looked Just Like Steve and Bill
The 1999 made-for-tv movie The Pirates of Silicon Valley is a fictionalized account of the rise of Apple and Microsoft in the early days of the personal computer industry. In one scene, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are in a heated match of ego-wrestling after Steve has given Bill a sneak peek at the Macintosh. It’s 1983, a year before it will be introduced. The top-secret prototype is shown housed in a typically Apple, design-conscious white enclosure, which reveals and conceals the Mac at the push of a button—like one of those spinning secret doors in a Hollywood movie haunted mansion. On the panel behind the Mac, the Macintosh logo is displayed—or is it?
Eagle-eyed typophiles will be appalled to note that this is not the ITC Garamond Light (condensed 80%) that Apple used for 20-odd years on the Macintosh logo, but is, in fact, New York (also condensed 80%), one of the Mac system fonts—the TrueType version, to be exact, which was released in 1991. See if you can spot the differences here:
Clearly, New York is indirectly related to ITC Garamond. The bitmap version of New York, which was included on the original Mac, bore a strong resemblance to ITC Garamond, the typeface Apple used as a central part of its corporate identity. The TrueType version of New York, done by Bigelow and Holmes, differs in almost every detail with ITC Garamond, but shares a similar look and feel. So similar that it fooled the people who made Pirates.
Friday July 9, 2004 / Filed under: Son of Typecasting
The Apple Terminator II+
This one is incredibly nerdy, but I think it fits my standards for anachronistic use of type in a movie. Besides, I just love it.
In The Terminator (MGM, 1984), a cybernetic assassin from the year 2029 is sent back in time to 1984 to kill the mother of the rebel leader who will eventually lead humans in victory in a war against the cyborgs, thereby preventing the rebel leader from being born and ensuring the cyborgs’ victory instead. Whatever. As we follow this killing machine on his relentless rampage, we are given short glimpses of what it’s like to see through the eyes of a cyborg:
In case you don’t recognize it (and, unless you are a regular Slashdot reader, why would you?), the highly technical looking computer readouts in his vision display are actually source code printouts for an Apple II+ program that ran in a computer magazine (Nibble) in the early 1980s. Plus, it looks like it was printed on a daisywheel printer. Also used were listings of COBOL programs. COBOL was once a popular computer language for writing accounting software.
I remember noticing the out-of-place computer code when I watched the movie for a second time back in 1984, but I always thought it was source code from the Atari Operating System (Atari used the same microprocessor as the Apple II series). A quick check with Google turned up the correct info. This bit of trivia seems to be well-known in certain circles.
Monday July 5, 2004 / Filed under: Son of Typecasting
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Alastair Johnston alerted me to this one. In the 1962 John Ford movie The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, there are several shots of the print shop and close ups the town newspaper, The Shinbone Star. Here’s one of them:
The film is presumably set in the 1880s, but the newspaper’s nameplate is set in Cooper Oldstyle, introduced in 1918. I also thought this mid-20th-century style “sho-card” lettering looked out of place:
Friday July 2, 2004 / Filed under: Son of Typecasting
How Did He Do It!?
This item was sent to me by Steven Hill last year, and it’s one of my favorite type/film gaffes.
It’s from a thriller called Oxygen made and set in 1999. It stars Adrien Brody as a clever kidnapper with a Houdini fixation. In one scene, he instructs the husband of the woman he’s kidnapped to deliver the money to him at Houdini’s grave and there’s a close-up of the gravestone:
In case you don’t recognize it, that’s the TrueType version of the old Macintosh system font, Chicago, released in 1989.
I also think it’s funny how the numbers for the years are not carved into the marble but, instead they project outward. I don’t know much about cutting gravestones, but I would think you would waste a lot of stone to get that effect. I also wonder how those little pebbles got up there… Mysteries upon mysteries!
Update: According to Victor Caston, it’s a Jewish tradition to place pebbles on the headstone, and Houdini was Jewish. One mystery solved, anyway. Amazing yet intermittent attention to detail.
Further Update (June 25, 2005): According to reader Zaldamo, the real Houdini gravestone features raised letters. (It’s also quite a bit fancier.) I did say I don’t know much about how they make gravestones. One thing is still certain: Apple’s Chicago font didn’t exist in 1926.
Thursday July 1, 2004 / Filed under: Son of Typecasting
Titanic Blunders
Not long after writing and posting Typecasting in December 2001, I learned from a reader that a similar article by Scott Stowell had been published earlier that year in Trace/AIGA Journal of Design, Vol. 1, No. 1, called “Accident Grotesk.” I sent for a back issue to check it out.
Had I seen it before I wrote my article, I might have had second thoughts. The premise—and even the tone—was similar. However, Stowell chose completely different examples: Titanic (1997), Topsy-Turvy (1999), Amistad (1997), Donnie Brasco (1997), Dazed and Confused (1993), The Perfect Storm (2000), and American Psycho (2000).
After reading it, I generally thought it was good, but I was a bit disappointed. In a few of the examples Stowell gives, I think the fonts are mis-identified. For example, he claims that the lettering on the gangway shown early in Titanic is set in ITC Officina (1990-1998):
For one thing, the capital “I” in Officina has serifs. Other than that, it’s very close, but I don’t think it quite matches. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to identify what it is, if it’s not Officina. I do agree that it does not look right for the era, whatever it is.
When I wrote my article, I wanted very badly to find type gaffes in Titanic but came up emptyhanded. After seeing Stowell’s find, I took another look and found an even better example:
The steam pressure gauge label is set in Helvetica (1959).
(On a non-type-related note, there are also the famous Picasso and Braque paintings shown in one scene, but maybe they made it to the life boats.)
Anyway, I don’t want this to be a blow-by-blow critique of Stowell’s article. After all, it preceded mine by nearly a year, and I must give him credit for that.
Update: Just heard from Scott Stowell, the author of “Accident Grotesk.” He maintains that it really is Officina, with the serifs on the “I” lopped off. Given that I am unable to offer a more convincing alternative, I admit that it’s possible he’s right.
Scott also tells me that, ironically, it was the steam gauge gaffe that lead to his writing the article. When designer Michael Bierut mentioned it to him in 1998, it became the genesis of his article. He left it out because he didn’t want to take credit for it and thought the use of Officina was worse anyway.
Thursday July 1, 2004 / Filed under: Son of Typecasting
Son of Typecasting
When I wrote Typecasting: The Use (and Misuse) of Period Typography in Movies over two years ago, I closed it with:
“I hope to add more examples in a follow-up article. If you have any film/type gaffes to share, drop me a line.”
Well, lots of you did drop me a line, but so far I have not written the follow-up article. Instead, I have decided to post examples here, filed under “Son of Typecasting.”