Novel Fonts

[DimesDan]

After a quick search threw the BBS search tool and not finding anything, I was just wondering, what are the names of the different fonts used on the front pages of the different book lines.

Cheers in advance.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

After a quick search threw the BBS search tool and not finding anything, I was just wondering, what are the names of the different fonts used on the front pages of the different book lines.

The TNG Relaunch books are using Palatino for their title logos.

The other fonts are generally found by doing a search for "Star Trek Fonts" and you can find reasonable fascimiles.

 

[DimesDan]

After a quick search threw the BBS search tool and not finding anything, I was just wondering, what are the names of the different fonts used on the front pages of the different book lines.

The TNG Relaunch books are using Palatino for their title logos.

The other fonts are generally found by doing a search for "Star Trek Fonts" and you can find reasonable fascimiles.

Cheers, I'll do some more searching, I did have a fair few Trek Fonts (I collect fonts and DTP is a bit of a hobby) but my Lappy decided to have a hissy fit one day and I had to reformat the thing and I had backed pretty much everything up apart from my hundreds of fonts!

 

[Marco Palmieri]

The TNG Relaunch books are using Palatino for their title logos.

It's not Palatino. It's Rotis Serif.

 

[TGTheodore]

And of course, different companies sometimes call the same fonts by different names to avoid paying royalties on them. (Arial, anyone?)

--Ted

 

[DEWLine]

Red Alert re: Millenium as well...and on and on...

 

[terpette]

The TNG Relaunch books are using Palatino for their title logos.

And I have to say, I don't like it. Oh, it looks pretty enough, but it doesn't have that Trek feel to it. Though I'm enjoying the books so the generic cover font hasn't kept me away. TNG has always been my favorite of the TV series.

Karen

 

[Osquevel]

^^ I'd have to agree with that. The title is very subdued, and it just doesn't quite seem to fit. It's not distracting me from buying the books, though, but it's not making me go "WOW I want to buy that" like, say the new DS9 font did.

 

[Marco Palmieri]

but it's not making me go "WOW I want to buy that" like, say the new DS9 font did.

While I'm glad you liked it, the current DS9 logo font (HandelGothic, for the folks keeping score) isn't new. It's just a new use of the font we saw in the opening credits of each episode, slightly flattened.

And if anyone’s curious, Destiny's logo font, ITC Benguiat, was used in the opening credits of Generations.

 

[Christopher]

I've long been curious: Are there names for the TOS title font, the TNG title font, and the TMP/DS9/VGR title font?

 

[Marco Palmieri]

I've long been curious: Are there names for the TOS title font, the TNG title font, and the TMP/DS9/VGR title font?

I've seen them under different names, because unlike the ones we've been discussing, they started out as logos, not fonts. The fonts were created later, based on the logos...but not, I think, "officially."

 

[Christopher]

Well, what are some of the names used for the derived fonts? For instance, if you wanted to tell your typographer to print the title of the book in the same font they used for the TOS opening credits (or one of the other ones I mentioned), what would you tell them?

 

[Marco Palmieri]

Well, what are some of the names used for the derived fonts? For instance, if you wanted to tell your typographer to print the title of the book in the same font they used for the TOS opening credits (or one of the other ones I mentioned), what would you tell them?

Memory Alpha has a partial list:

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Star_Trek_fonts

 

[Christopher]

Another thing I've long wondered is, who designed the ST title logos? I assume it was someone on the art or graphics staff of each show or film; I'd guess that Lee Cole probably designed the TMP ("Galaxy") font and that Mike Okuda came up with the TNG ("Sonic") font. But who designed the TOS logo?

 

[GodThingFormerly]

I'd guess that Lee Cole probably designed the TMP ("Galaxy") font...

Richard Foy of Communication Arts, Inc., actually. Foy also designed the title fonts for Douglas Trumbull's Silent Running hence his gig on ST:TMP.

TGT

 

[Christopher]

^^Thanks. Well, that's why they call it guessing.

My belated kudos to Mr. Foy, then. I've always loved the TMP title font.

 

[DEWLine]

On a not-quite-related note: I've seen several approaches to the TOS-era hull marking-issue lettering. One's Thomas Lai's AmarilloUSAF, and another is Charles Casimiro's Airborne family.

All fairness to Mr. Lai - especially since I bought a license for AmarilloUSAF Pro - but I think Mr. Casimiro may have the better font family...at least as far as multilingual usage is concerned; The Airborne family includes Latin, Greek, Cyrillic and Hebrew glyphs. So for people wanting to decorate their starship models in languages using those alphabets...

I do wonder who came up with the original letterforms, though. Someone on the US Air Force payroll, back in the day, perhaps?

 

[GodThingFormerly]

I've always loved the TMP title font.

As have I, although the original version by Robert Abel & Associates illustrator Michael Sterling isn't without a certain 1970s charm of its own:

TGT

 

[Tara]

Also, can anyone help a girl out? I've been driving myself absolutely CRAZY, trying to find vector art of the Pocket Books TOS logo:

I got a decent screencap of it, from a Simon & Schuster PDF exported from an InDesign file that's up on Scridb, but it's (wisely--to prevent piracy) unprintable/downloadable. I tried tracing it in Illustrator, but all the curved edges made it slightly wobbly.

Help?

(Frankly, the inconsistent branding of TOS on the whole is driving me up a wall. There are apparently 4 different TOS logos currently being used in licencing, 5 if you count the Star Trek (2009) logo)