Hi all,
My wife just asked an interesting question. We were watching Archer on Netflix, and she asked for the name of the style of the font in the opening credits. I said, "well, it's a display font." To that she said, "No, I mean, like, '60s spy font.'" So there's the question: What exactly IS the name of that style (if there is one)?
Sample?
Casual, headline, display, decorative, and freestyle are descriptors that would apply here.
Broadly, display typeface is the classification. Freestyle or casual would be the subset. You could even argue that this particular font is in the comic book style.
The typeface is called Baveuse, and the Archer logo actually straightens/aligns all the letters on a single baseline—the original angles each letter for a “bouncy” effect:
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/typodermic/baveuse/
Baveuse roughly translates from the French as “slobbery” (as in the dog from the Tom Hanks movie, Turner & Hooch).
A few other characteristics are the fact that it’s unicase, top-heavy, somewhat reverse-contrast, but mostly it has misaligned or “cut-out” counters, a feature typical of the “bouncy” typefaces of the sixties (of which the best know example is probably Ad Lib: http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/bitstream/ad-lib/).
Captured from web.archive.org on 22 Mar 2015. view this capture
The genre of unstructured bouncy lettering that looks like it was cut from cardboard with an exacto knife, often with a straight or curved ruler, avoiding exact horizontal and vertical; perhaps originated with lettering by Saul Bass in the late 1950s, particularly for the Hitchcock movies. Also Ed Benguiat.
The idea was to express jarring disorientation with a cool jazz rhythm.
No agreed name for the style and its variations. Various attempts such as "Beatnik" did not gain wide acceptance.
Don