Graphic design
It amazes me how few movies have an identity. While millions of dollars are spent on the marketing campaign of Hollywood movies, their logos or wordmarks are usually much cheaper: $35 (the price of the Trajan ‘movie font.’ on MyFonts.com). Logos [...]1980s horror movie poster logos and typography.
Lettering and typography from the pre-Trajan era
Hollywood studios used to have their own in-house designers, which explains why some title designs have the same style. Until the late 1950s they were mostly created by National Screen Service, the company which controlled the distribution of theatrical [...]Warner Bros. trailer typography
25 years worth of trailer typography: 1930-1955
Have you ever visited a department store just to admire their graphic design? Me neither. But I might have done that if I was born 50 years earlier. Just look at the images above. Wow. And those are just their logos. Imagine what their posters, folders, price tags, receipts, [...]Handlettered logos from defunct department stores
Script lettering from American department stores
2011 marks the 100th anniversary of Chevrolet. The company started naming models during the 1910s, which carried names like ‘Classic six’ or ‘Superior sedan.’ Only the name Chevrolet sporadically appeared on grilles of early models. This changed [...]Chevrolet chrome script lettering
Chrome script lettering from 1956 to 1971
2011 marks the 100th anniversary of Chevrolet. During these 100 years Chevrolet developed over a hundred different types of cars, vans and trucks. All of those cars, vans and trucks have something in common: they all contain speedometers. Speedometers [...]Chevrolet speedometer design
Design evolution from 1941 to 2011
There are a lot of somewhat hidden places on the internet. Fantastic content, located on search engine unfriendly websites like libraries, universities and auction websites. I found the first image of a beer stamp on an auction website, which led me to pages like the [...]Revenue beer stamps
Engraved stamps from 1866 to 1971
“Extra! Extra! Read all about it!” Until the late 1940s newspapers were the primary method of delivering the news. In addition to normal daily papers Extra’s were published when something big happened. These were sold on the street by newsboys. Today [...]9/11 Newspaper headlines: design and typography
“Extra! Extra! Read all about it!”
Once I knew where to look I found a lot of Sanborn Fire Insurance maps. When I started comparing them I noticed the variety of logo/wordmark designs. Displayed above are 30 examples, but it could have been easily been 100. Which proves designers were [...]Sanborn map company logo and lettering
Wordmarks from maps issued between 1885 and 1921
In february ‘BibliOdyssey’ posted an article about Sanborn fire insurance typography. A fantastic collection of rich typography from the late 1800s and early 1900s. Their selection seemed quite random though. Finding more images wasn’t easy. I found [...]
