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?).
benj111 28 days ago [-]
We use this sort of short hand all the time.
There's "ye olde" in a gothic font.
Walk into a super market, every product is giving you non textual clues as to what it is, and why it's different from the identical thing right next to it.
You notice the odd ones out because you have to stop and work out what the thing is.
Edit. An example is spreadable 'butter', in the UK and Europe you can't say it's butter, it doesn't say it's butter, but I bet most people have never noticed that because it's in butter type packaging with the design language you'd expect.
socalgal2 28 days ago [-]
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"
canes123456 28 days ago [-]
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.
earthtograndma 27 days ago [-]
They had top men working on the logo. Top men.
BoredPositron 28 days ago [-]
The future always has context.
giancarlostoro 28 days ago [-]
Needs a (2016)
> 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
JK-Swizzle 28 days ago [-]
As someone who has read the book, it does go through the history and inspiration of modern sci-fi typeset. Great coffee table book. Mainly expands on the articles on the website with more details and graphics.
giancarlostoro 28 days ago [-]
Might have to snag it, and like you say, keep it laying around as a coffee table book somewhere. :)
bit_savager 28 days ago [-]
"Somewhere"
giancarlostoro 28 days ago [-]
Probably my bookshelf lol
genghisjahn 28 days ago [-]
And then there is the papyrus font for avatar…
arionmiles 28 days ago [-]
He just... highlighted Avatar. He clicked the dropdown menu, and then he randomly selected Papyrus. Like a...Like a thoughtless child just wandering by a garden, just yanking leaves along the way.
Funny. I just googled this site 2 hours ago for a font inspiration for a makerspace logo.
Michroma is a Google Font alternative for Eurostile.
ErroneousBosh 28 days ago [-]
Given the name you'd think it would be an alternative for Microgramma, but no, no - just look at the internal corners on letters like N, W, and V. In Microgramma they'd be flattened off but in Michroma and Eurostile they come to a point.
nedt 28 days ago [-]
But Star Wars isn't from the future. Does that mean there is a time loop in fonts?
pavel_lishin 27 days ago [-]
"This has happened before and it will happen again."
Animats 28 days ago [-]
Somewhere, an LLM trained on this and can now produce cliche future fonts.
Typeset in the future was awesome, too bad it stopped updating
swiftcoder 28 days ago [-]
I love just how dated some of these futuristic fonts now seem, having grown up with most of them
ako 28 days ago [-]
Yes brings me back to the 80s demo scene…
alfiedotwtf 28 days ago [-]
Not only that, this article had the same feel of an old ANSI scene graffiti tutorial (I think it was made by the ACiD team
pezezin 27 days ago [-]
For maximum demoscene impact you need a metal gradient, like the European Megadrive logo.
efitz 28 days ago [-]
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.
mrexroad 28 days ago [-]
FWIW, ST:TNG only used the faux 3D effect for the season that aired on the year of Star Trek’s 25th anniversary. Subsequent seasons reverted to the 2d text.
I reckon this style originated much earlier from the fonts used on the covers of science fiction books and magazines.
booleandilemma 28 days ago [-]
My first thought was "that's just the star trek font".
xiaoyu2006 28 days ago [-]
A genuinely fun post.
ctippett 28 days ago [-]
I agree! A refreshing interlude to the cybersecurity postmortems and corporate layoff news.
harimau777 28 days ago [-]
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!
There's "ye olde" in a gothic font.
Walk into a super market, every product is giving you non textual clues as to what it is, and why it's different from the identical thing right next to it.
You notice the odd ones out because you have to stop and work out what the thing is.
Edit. An example is spreadable 'butter', in the UK and Europe you can't say it's butter, it doesn't say it's butter, but I bet most people have never noticed that because it's in butter type packaging with the design language you'd expect.
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.
> 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
Papyrus on the big screen 'til mid-to-late 2030s.
https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Orion_Pictures
Michroma is a Google Font alternative for Eurostile.
Is the Trajan fad over yet?[1]
[1] https://letterboxd.com/sethpaul/list/trajan-the-typeface-tha...
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.
Still a great article though! More of this please!
Do we know who won those wars?
Keeeeerrrrrrrrrrrnnn!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Designers_Republic
https://play.date/games/hyper-vector/
Who knew back then that we'd go from less design to no design at all produced by machines.