That Starbase 11 wall chart - noe in slide form
- Thread starter ChallengerHK
- Start date
From what I can tell, 196pt was the largest you could get. (Website sates 2.7 inches per letter)
Would it be a font like this:
or
or:
Vintage Letraset Incomplete Sheets (1)
Vintage Letraset Sheets.They are all incomplete and see photos.
vintageonvintage.patternbyetsy.com
or like this:
Vintage Letraset 1 Sheet - Etsy
This Transfer Paper item by VintageonVintage has 44 favorites from Etsy shoppers. Ships from Canada. Listed on Sep 4, 2025
www.etsy.com
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Looks like Eurostile Bold to me. But they have trimmed the “1”. Designed in 1962, so it would have been new and fresh at the time.
https://ar.inspiredpencil.com/pictures-2023/eurostile-bold-font
The “6” in Eurostile has a shorter lower half than the “8”. And yet in “1X31” the lower half looks the same as in the numbers with clear sixes. So I think it is 1631.
https://ar.inspiredpencil.com/pictures-2023/eurostile-bold-font
The “6” in Eurostile has a shorter lower half than the “8”. And yet in “1X31” the lower half looks the same as in the numbers with clear sixes. So I think it is 1631.
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Eurostyle was used for the end credits in Season 1, so would certainly have been kicking around.
It became a sci-fi staple, and in modified form, was heavily used in the Star Trek movies.
Could equally be the very similar Microgramma (which also has Trek heritage), which has the same feature of the 6 having a fuller, rounder lower half than the 8. At this resolution, it could be why we're struggling to see the slither of daylight in the upper half of the 6.
It became a sci-fi staple, and in modified form, was heavily used in the Star Trek movies.
Could equally be the very similar Microgramma (which also has Trek heritage), which has the same feature of the 6 having a fuller, rounder lower half than the 8. At this resolution, it could be why we're struggling to see the slither of daylight in the upper half of the 6.
I think you are exactly right about that slither of daylight. It is a telltale marker.
I might be misremembering but I think Eurostile was developed by the same artist who developed Microgramma, in order to create something with other widths and weights and a lower case, which I think, Microgramma lacked.
Franz Joseph can be credited with using Microgramma for hull fonts and I think it was Probert who reworked Eurostile bold extended into the hull font used on the refit Enterprise.
I might be misremembering but I think Eurostile was developed by the same artist who developed Microgramma, in order to create something with other widths and weights and a lower case, which I think, Microgramma lacked.
Franz Joseph can be credited with using Microgramma for hull fonts and I think it was Probert who reworked Eurostile bold extended into the hull font used on the refit Enterprise.
As I noted above, I think the “1” has been trimmed.
I don’t think the title is in Eurostile. My guess is that was what was hand drawn, but only because I don’t recognize the font.
Having reviewed the images, I concur that it certainly looks like 1831 in one of the faded-red images. I did all kinds of zooming on that pic to try to find a discontinuity in the right upper vertical and it was illusory at best.
However, that's also the image which shows a funny black blob emerging from the upper right of the 9 in 1709 just above it.
It's also part of the darker series of digits anyway, which, due to the lighting, look to be of heavier line weight than lower digits, even though I'm sure they're exactly the same in reality.
As such, even though I am perfectly content with registries even up into and beyond the 1900s at this point in the chronology due to later works, meaning I have no philosophical problem with 1831, I'm nonetheless sticking to 1631 as per my previous deskew results that seemed to show that on the remaster, the number width observations, and Jein's view of a less aged film.
Also, I hate to throw shade at the OGs, and I realize typeface availability and the effort to create such things is just easy-peasy now versus then, but I would like to reiterate once again . . . dear sweet heavens there had to be something better available. I whipped up some 8 point stuff in Wordpad, zoomed out 50%, and screenshotted . . . this was the result, and they're all fairly easy to read except Helvetica.
(The custom Iosevka font kinda resembles the ST2 tactical graphics digits, which were pretty dang awesome. Also, I neglected to note that the Routed Gothic is my modified tabular version, hence the monospace digits.)
Wouldn't it have been amazing not to have to zoom and squint and such for almost 60 years?
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