Newsgroups: comp.fonts Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!kibo From: kibo@jec311.its.rpi.edu (James 'Kibo' Parry) Subject: Re: Star Trek, the font generation Message-ID: <+=pg0!=@rpi.edu> Nntp-Posting-Host: jec311.its.rpi.edu Organization: Emerson College (Boston), formerly RPI (Troy, NY) References: <1991Apr19.034051.10491@cica.indiana.edu> <1991Apr19.174610.19644@newsserver.sfu.ca> <15102@life.ai.mit.edu> Distribution: usa Date: 20 Apr 91 06:58:12 GMT Lines: 84 In article <15102@life.ai.mit.edu> cbwood@churchy.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Clifton B. Woo d) writes: >At any rate, Crillee wasn't exactly what I was looking for. For an example >of Microgramma (or Microgamma, etc.) look at the typeset they use to stencil >the names of the Ships on the hull or the names of the type of station. Microgramma Bold Extended is the ship-name font; it's rather different from plain Microgramma (33% wider and twice as dark, approximately. I digitized it once for someone.) Be sure to get the right font in the family, if you're a real Trekkist :-) Eurostile is the same as Microgramma (the designer, Novarese, redrew it-- the difference is that Eurostile has lowercase.) Eurostile is also available in Bold Extended. Crillee is used in the credits of The Next Generation, as you said. For a lot of the interior ship stuff in The Next Generation they've been using Helvetica Condensed. I think it's a better choice than the Microgramma family to be used in the context of a future setting, because Microgramma already looks rather dated (50s/60s). Of course, Microgramma was contemporary-looking when the original Trek was done. Similarly, the custom font the use for the movie titles has a seventies look to it, probably because the first movie was filmed in the 70s. The logo for The Next Generation is derived from Stop, a typeface that's been around a while but is now becoming incredibly overused in logos that want to look high-tech; in a few years designers like me will be looking at The Next Generation and saying "oh, that logo is so late-eighties-looking", I'll wager. Stop and Yagi Double were also used extensively for Battlestar Galactica. Since you say you're interested in other "science fiction" fonts, and I stare at the fonts when I watch science fiction, here are some others worth mentioning: Futura Black (a stencil-like font derived from condensed Futura.) It was used in the first season Space:1999 titles, the Buckaroo Banzai titles, and many other things. I don't know why people consider it futuristic-looking; to me it seems rather Art Deco or Bahaus. (It's about fifty years old now, and is--I think--one of the best solid-looking fonts.) Baby Teeth and Sinaloa are also often used for futuristic-looking letters; they're both extremely simplified, solid black capitals (Baby Teeth has a single white notch in most characters; Sinaloa has racing stripes.) They, like the others I mention, can be found in a Letraset catalog. One of my pet projects is to design some lettering that looks like how *I* think alphabets will be simplified in the future (which, of course, differs from how people like Paul Renner and so on have done simplified alphabets, because it's a very personal opinion.) A major catch is that it depends on what context the font will be used in; a dystopian police state might like very standard block letters, all caps (say Futura or Helvetica) while an artistically-oriented leisure society might go for more humanistic, flowing scripts. So far I've come up with a few predictions for fonts for the far future, and my sketches have been sufficiently weird-looking to keep me from wanting to ever use them :-) They have provided inspiration for other projects, though. If you're designing the look of a world for a science fiction show or film, it makes sense to me that you'd want to hire someone to draw some original lettering--not only would you have more control over the look of the world, but you'd also avoid having something that looked 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, or 90s... (after all, you wouldn't put a chair designed in 1985 in a room that needs 24th-century furniture, would you?) I think the most successful--in terms of imaginative design that's not dated--is the numbering on the cars in Blade Runner. Very odd-looking, distorted letters, but with digitized stairsteps in them 9the jaggies keep the warped letters from looking 60s.) Note, though, that the titles of Blade Runner were set in Goudy Old Style, which conveys a very old-fashioned, classy impression which I feel was quite inappropriate. -- James "Kibo" Parry kibo@rpi.edu 132 Beacon St. #213, Boston, MA 02116 (617) 262-3922