Great read otherwise, I know the author mentions their book, I do wonder if he covers the history of how these fonts came to be so standard... for future stuff
I kind of wish they had used something other than Eurostyle for the starting font in their example since it is already a font that has become associated with sci-fi.
Still a great article though! More of this please!
At the 1996 ATypI meeting in Den Haag, one of the speakers coined the term “sterotypography” to refer to certain cliches that get used in type usage. Another case of this is the use of Neuland and Neuland Inline to represent Africa, and of course the assortment of faux Chinese fonts that were ubiquitous on Chinese takeout menus in the 80s and 90s (and probably still are, but are there still takeout menus in the era of Grubhub?).
Does the Back To The Future logo really count? Raiders of the Lost Ark as a very similar style but does not evoke "future". Yes, there are subtle differences. My point is, if you divorced them from the connection to their content I think it would be hard to point to one as "future" and the other as "not future"
The typeface could not be more different between the two. One is a sans serif font with many of the factors the author called out. The other calls back to hand illustration and comics IMO.
What is the same is the color scheme and gradient. This likely is more about what was in style at the time for movie posters. You can also justify this is representive of the past part of back to the future.
I dunno, it’s kinda futuristic, but it’s missing the faux 3d effect where it appears to have warped up close to you and left a trail of light behind it, like the Star Trek example of the end. Nothing says “future” like fake 3d effects.
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[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 50.6 ms ] thread> Posted on February 18, 2016 by Dave Addey
Great read otherwise, I know the author mentions their book, I do wonder if he covers the history of how these fonts came to be so standard... for future stuff
Is the Trajan fad over yet?[1]
[1] https://letterboxd.com/sethpaul/list/trajan-the-typeface-tha...
Still a great article though! More of this please!
Who knew back then that we'd go from less design to no design at all produced by machines.
Michroma is a Google Font alternative for Eurostile.
Do we know who won those wars?
What is the same is the color scheme and gradient. This likely is more about what was in style at the time for movie posters. You can also justify this is representive of the past part of back to the future.
https://play.date/games/hyper-vector/
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raumpatrouille_%E2%80%93_Die_p...
I reckon this style originated much earlier from the fonts used on the covers of science fiction books and magazines.