New Font: BigBlok
A great many years ago when working in game publishing I had a real fascination with doing titles in a strong, super-bold font called Bolt Bold. The truth is I rather overused it. In doing some research I find it on more than a dozen different game books I wrote in the early 80s, all quite collectable and out of print today.
Windlass Font Takes to the Road
I stopped into our local barbeque parlor for dinner this evening, and parked out front I found a stylishly decorated Mini Cooper wrapped with art promoting DragonsLair, Austin’s preeminent comic book and game emporium. Even better, the store logo featured on the car (one of two in a matched set) features our Windlass Font.
Because of the popularity of pirate themed books, movies and games, Windlass has recently become by far our most popular and bestselling font, supplanting Folkard which stole the title from Abaddon several years ago.
It was very cool to run into Windlass on wheels right in the little exurb of Austin where I live. It turns out that it was on the way to a live action roleplaying event at the nearby J. Lorraine Ghost Town just east of Manor, Texas.
Numi Tea Featuring Rackham Font
We often feature products which use our fonts in their packaging or content, but most of the time those are printed products like books and games. One very different example of our fonts in use which we found recently was in the packaging of Numi brand teas, which have been using our Rackham font as their logo font for about about a decade. Numi sells a wide variety of high-end specialty teas and is carried through stores like Whole Foods and also online at Amazon and other retailers.
The Rackham font is based on hand lettering by Arthur Rackham, from a style he used extensively in designing titles and frontispieces for many of his illustrated books. The font is great for unusual looking titles, with caps and custom small caps. It’s one of several fonts in our Rackham Fonts and Art Package which also includes Rackham Italic, a companion style which goes with the original Rackham font.
Abaddon – Bullet for My Valentine Logo Font
This may take on something of the character of a true confession when I have to start by admitting that I spent way too much time this afternoon at the local mall with my 10-year-old daughter shopping for trendy merchandise at Hot Topic. While she looked at Adventure Time and Dr. Who items, my eye was caught by our Abaddon font appearing on the cover of the new CD Temper, Temper by the band Bullet for My Valentine, which has apparently been using it as their logo font for several years. They’ve had someone design a variation on the “V”, but otherwise it’s Abaddon straight out of the box.
Since it became popular as Godsmack’s logo font, Abaddon has been enormously popular with bands who tend towards a metal or gothy sound. In fact, Abaddon has been so popular for band logos that we get queries about it from new bands all the time and I find myself regrettably discouraging them from using it because it’s so overexposed. Nonetheless, it’s still cool to see it on a product shelved at America’s favorite teen subculture merchandising outlet.
I listened to a few tracks from the album online and it was surprisingly not awful. Certainly no worse than a lot of what I find on the radio. That said, I’m not a fan of the album cover. Abaddon is certainly the most appealing part of the design.
Captain Kidd Font in The Last Battle
I was walking through the local comic store today when my eye was caught by a comic with a cover of muscular Romans fighting in a huge battle on a comic called The Last Battle. I’m a sucker for anything historical involving Rome, a theme not explored enough in the graphic genre, but what held my eye even more was that the cover title was done in my Captain Kidd font. Not a very Roman choice, but certainly creatively incorporated.
The comic itself was originally released at ComiCon several years ago as a European import and then released in a mass-market edition last year. It’s listed as issue one, but there’s no evidence of a second issue release or in the works. Like so many intriguing comic ideas it may be an orphan. However, it is a complete 80 page graphic novel in its own right, telling the story of Caesar’s final battle for the conquest of Gaul in 52bc, with dynamic art by Dan Brereton and a story by Italian writer Tito Faracci who wanted to recreate the “sword and sandals” epics popular in Italy in the 1970s in comic book form.
Of course, you can have Captain Kidd for your very own by ordering it today.
Interlude Font on Lucini Pasta Sauce Labels
While wandering through the gourmet section of the local grocery store I encountered a very high end brand of pasta sauce made by Lucini Italia which uses our Interlude font for the product names on the labels of many of their products. A pint jar of sauce runs about $10 from various online retailers and they have nine different flavors of sauce, including Rustic Tomato Basil and Hearty Artichoke. And in addition to jars of sauce they also sell smaller servings in a boilable bag at about half the price. They also carry a full line of related products like olive oil, vinegar and salad dressing. Some of the flavored olive oils are very pricey.
Our Interlude font is an excellent choice for this kind of marketing use, with its classical yet rustic look and striking visual appeal. I’ve been expecting to see it on wine bottles, which seemed like a natural fit, but fancy pasta sauce may be the next best thing.
If you like Interlude you can get it and its companion font Prelude from our ONLINE STORE
Gehenna Font in Terran Games “Life Spinner”
Our fonts show up in some interesting places and unusual media. One of the coolest examples of this is the use of the Gehenna font in Terran Games’ pewter “Life Spinner.”
The Life Spinner is a tool for card and roleplaying gamers to keep track of the life points or energy or other values in a game. It’s a high quality numbered disk, cast in pewter and of a size and style compatible for use as a base for a miniature figure. It can be painted or used as is. It’s a neat little tool for a very specialized market.
We learned of this interesting product when the manufacturer contacted us because he had used our Gehenna font for the numbers on the original production run of the Life Spinner. As he was preparing to restock he contacted us because of a concern that some of the numbers were hard to read when cast in pewter (look at the 8 to the right). He commissioned us to make some modifications to the font specifically for his use, opening up some of the characters and making them easier to read in that format.
We actually do a lot of custom font design and modification so we took care of it in a couple of days. It’s not even the first font we’ve done for metal working. We’ve previously done custom fonts for engraving on jewelry and stamping into aluminum for numbering airplane parts. The end result looks pretty good in print, though we have yet to see the new castings.
Gamers can now look forward to a more readable version of the Life Spinner from Terran Games’ and if you like the font, both Gehenna and the more radical looking Gehenna Extreme are available from our online store.
And I Hesitate to Mention…
While trapped in a hospital recovery room with a very limited selection of cable channels and at the mercy of the occupant’s remote control, I stumbled on one of our fonts in use in a context I hesitate to even mention.
It turns out that our Goodfellow font is the title font in the British television monstrosity “My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding,” a program which is a sure sign that we are in the midst of a full=fledged cultural apocalypse.
It’s nice to see one of our classic fonts getting a lot of work, but I do wish it would keep better company.
Goodfellow Font in Django Unchained
I notice from our keyword tracking that we are getting a lot of hits from people looking for fonts from the movie Django Unchained. Not surprising give the striking retro-graphics which are common in Tarantino films. I suspect that most of them are looking for the font used in the titles or on the poster and I’m afraid that right now we can’t satisfy that need. However, one of our fonts does appear in the film if you keep an eye out for it.
When the Django and Dr. Schultz travel down to Mississippi to find Django’s wife, they meet with plantation owner Charles Candie at a private club called the “Cleopatra Club”. If you keep an eye peeled as they arrive at the club, you’ll see our Goodfellow font featured as the font for the name of the club in the brass plaque by the door as they enter. It’s not a prominent appearance, but at least we have a presence in the film.
All of this interest raises the question of whether we should produce a font like the one used in the movie titles and poster. It’s a pretty simple and straightforward design which I could probably reproduce from memory having seen it in the film – or at least do a very close approximation – the weight and shape of the characters is reasonably similar to our Madding font, which would make a good starting point. Or I could sneak into the end of the film and take some illicit photos of the screen and get a more perfect resource than my memory.
It’s a dilemma, so here’s a poll
Should We Create a Django Unchained Title Font?
Folkard Font featured in Bard’s Tale
Bard’s Tale is a venerable computer game which has gone through many versions and updates. In its latest incarnation as a multiplayer roleplaying game App for tablets and smartphones it has gone through a look and feel upgrade, and part of that upgrade is new title graphics which (like so many other fantasy themed games) feature our Folkard Font prominently.
You can see Folkard featured here in the main title and it is also featured on splash screens and titles within the game. To make it look a little different from how it is used in World of Warcraft and Disney’s Faeries games they have added an outline and some texturing, but those embellishments aside, it’s just another reminder that when you want something to have a fantasy look the font to go for is Folkard.
Hesperides at True Blue Tattoo
One of the trendy local tattoo parlors here in Austin is True Blue Tattoo. They have a large staff of tattoo artists who do some very nice body art, including several who specialize in cool designs with calavera themes. But what I found most exciting on a recent visit to their website was their decision to feature some of our fonts prominently on their site and their signage.
They use our Buccaneer font for the text on their front page, but what I found more exciting was the use of Hesperides for the titles throughout their website. I have always thought Hesperides was one of our coolest font designs, with its unusual character forms and historic calligraphic elements. Yet it has never been a terribly popular font, certainly not as popular as I think it deserves, so it’s nice to see someone else appreciating it and putting it to good use.
