Hello everyone. I need a good recommendation for a SCIFI ish typeface. So far I am thinking of Futura. We were given a picture in class and had to write a short story about it. Then translate it into a typographic poster. No restrictions in regards to that. The picture had to do with robots and felt very futuristic.
Eurostile is a classic choice for sci fi movies.
A good free one for you:
http://www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com/
Scroll down to Orbitron. I think it'd work nicely.
Any more?
BPimperial from backpacker.gr
Wot, no votes at all for Papyrus!?
Be sure to read the Movies/TV shows that use Eurostile/Microgramma as a "futuristic font" thread.
What kind of sci-fi? Retro camp? Hard Science? Aliens?
Obviously we agree, that the future will be ugly. Why should the letter forms in future change faster than in the past?
If you use Futura you'll be channeling Kubrick.
The question is whether to re-use a font already known for its use in SF, or be different...
The best sci-fi IMHO places some very familiar things in a completely new context. Depending on the desired effect, I might go with something deliberately non-futuristic so that the contrast is more felt (e.g. Century, American Typewriter).
--Kelsey
In the future it's wall-to-wall 1990s techno fonts.
I'm always baffled designers still stick to the 'oh it's new and different' fonts of the 60's, or in the style of them for sci-fi.. Since well, it's the ultimate future-type & tech achievement to create perfectly balanced display versions of classical serifs instead of plain straight & square grotesques. Ah well, I guess everyone goes for the dystopian touch.
A good point Oranginas but I guess, as with most things, the poster is aimed at the hard-working salt of the earth sort and not typographic and semiotics conscious creatives like ourselves. So in order to look Futuristic the Type must be "Futuristic" and what is obviously futuristic to everybody else...something like OCR-A, Adobe mono, Mars Police or Crouwel's New Alphabet, any typeface designed with computer recognition in mind normally looks suitably Science Fiction-esque.
don-flash, I think if the designer can come up with something that is not the conventional 60s-80s sci-fi computer type, and still convey the future, designers and "salt of the earth" types alike would be able to understand and appreciate it, even if they don't know why they do. That said I don't see why you can't use something obviously "futuristic". To me there can be beauty in kitsch.
I think futuristic posters can be done with any typeface, it's just the usage that matters. It's probably more down to 'unknown' or 'different' since examples like the new alphabet and OCR-A are horribly outdated, and the tech that required the letterforms the way they are doesn't even exist any more.
It's not really as a comment, (and I don't want to hijack your thread !) but I find it quite interesting since, well how new are those forms ? One of my lecturers for type design had once shown examples of old foundry type with almost the same abstraction, as what the OCR and New Alphabet had (although they were of course, designed that way for different reasons) So such shapes have always been around in minds, although less in use.
This all aside, it's always a safe bet to go for futuristic type, cliches are there to use and play around with. And with at least one solid 'this is the future' primer in your design, you can play around more with the other aspects of the poster, making them less strict future-like.
>I think futuristic posters can be done with any typeface
A challenge!
Who would have thought twenty years ago a cheap screen targeted rip-off font would rank among the most recognizable ones?
Calibri might be the face of the future of this decade.
>I think futuristic posters can be done with any typeface
This seems to be an interesting topic. I believe two opposing forces might exist if you want to make something to convey two kinds of future. The opposition should stand between humanist and non-humanist types. Why is that? It has to do with the two generally conveyed futures of utopia and dystopia. Or, to explain better, of anarchy and autocracy.
What do I mean by this? Well, essencially, in autocratic governments it's more regular to see rigid and geometrically conceived typefaces, as well as architecture. Or at least it is that way conceived.
More calligraphic or humanist types are related to decadent periods (symbolic decadence), when a more broader knowledge has been acquired about a subject, period which is bound to cease it's existence.
I don't know if I'm fully explaining myself, but a historical overview might turn some light on this subject.
Ancient Rome was definitely an autocratic government. And although typographical records for this period lacked rules, it's renaissance counterpart did, and renaissance was a period used by the catholic church to dignify itself.
More callygraphic records from the mannerist and pre-mannerist periods, derived from carolingian type, are more closely related to utopias, and to 'Utopia', by Thomas Moore.
Once again, the Neoclassical/Romantic period were widely used to promote politics and governents, and didones are due to this time. But realist and expressionist types are very much more calligraphic, or perhaps less refined.
Hitlerian domination were recurrent with their very structural blackletter opposed for a time humanist (more concretely roman) typefaces, when art deco thrived.
And struturalism, gestalt and bauhaus promoted a neutral, or geometric type, for international use, without personality, much to the likings of '1974'.
In the days we live, affected by today's general crisis, we once again prefer humanist types and faces, full of their own inconsistencies that themselves make type beautiful.
It therefore seems natural when imperial future calls for it, to use types related in closeness to those of the sixties, due to the prevalence of sans in light-bound systems (computers and monitors) against serifs in print, and geometrical sorts that we all relate to 'future'.
A big problem with typography, as well as with every other arts, is that we usually apply our own time set ideals to different times and eras, which might easily find them obsolete or erroneous. Citing Robert Bringhurst in my own words (and I don't particularly fully agree with this specific point of view, but it seems to apply for this), type doesn't evolve, it changes throughout time.
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