I've been writing a series of blog posts about the title fonts and logos of Star Trek: https://lessaccurategrandmother.blogspot.com/search/label/topic: fonts What I thought would be one or two posts keeps growing and growing. The next post is going to be about the books. Can you guys think of any weird logos unique to the books? I'm thinking prose fiction for now, comics for the future. I'm good with post-2001 stuff: unique logos for the DS9 and TNG relaunches, the latter of which eventually because a generic "Star Trek" logo, a new logo for S.C.E. using the "Jefferies" ship hull font. But what about earlier stuff? I can think of a couple: the Corgi reprints of Star Trek novels in the UK (1970s) had a unique logo the children's picture book The Prisoner of Vega had a unique logo the Bantam 25th anniversary reprints of the Blish stories used a unique logo (it was also used on the 25th Anniversary computer game, so I assume it was for the anniversary; I dunno if there were more uses of it) Of course, some of the earliest printings of Bantam and Pocket novels didn't have a logo at all, just something like "A STAR TREK NOVEL" on the cover. Anything else you all can think of?
Not sure if that falls within the scope of this thread, but the German New Frontier novels have a little Excalibur between the New and the Frontier of the logo (for example here), and the sword is also present on most NF novels. Star Trek: Prometheus also has a unique font and I don't think the font used for the German translations of the Rise of the Federation novels has been used elsewhere in Trek.
The collectible card sets' packaging. 25th Anniversary Star Trek card wrappers by Ian McLean, on Flickr I love how logo fonts get recycled. Compare these TNG and TMP studio passes! Star Trek set passes for guests and visitors by Ian McLean, on Flickr
Oh, I was going to discuss Prometheus but I hadn't thought about German translations; thanks for the tip. I don't have my notes to hand, but the "STAR TREK" in the Prometheus novels (English and German) is actually used for subtitles on some TNG novels; it's on the cover of The Stuff of Dreams, for example. The little Excalibur is in the English NF logo, too. It always bugged me that's it's still an Ambassador in the later novels, though The Returned updated the logo with Serpentine... but then slapped an entirely inaccurate Ambassador on the covers! I seem to recall early mock-ups of the first New Frontier covers used an "NF" symbol instead of the Excalibur, but someone pointed out it was too much like the logo of the Nationalist Front! That's interesting. I had thought the TNG font was a bespoke font created for the show! Thanks for the tip on the trading cards!
Great topic! I know it's not prose fiction, but the logo used in The Prisoner of Vega appeared on a number of Ballantine tie-in products, such as The Making of Star Trek, The World of Star Trek, Star Fleet Technical Manual, and Star Trek Blueprints. The 25th anniversary reprints of the Star Trek Logs used this logo, which I don't recall seeing on any other works of fiction: (I think this may have appeared on some other products, but I don't recall what those might be at the moment.) The children's book The Truth Machine has the standard logo on the cover, but uses a different one on the title page: (Sorry it's crooked; this is the only image I could find.) It's plain, but one of the reprints of the Bantam TOS books consistently used this: I don't know if you'll count the next two, but... One of the editions of the first book of Blish adaptations seemed to use a logo that tried to evoke the TOS logo, without being the TOS logo: As did the original Star Trek Log volumes (OK, mostly just that it was in italics, rather than specifically looking like the TOS logo): And speaking of Blish, I found this when I was searching for the sample images I included above. Apparently the Dutch translations of the early Blish adaptations used this unique mix-and-match: That's all I've got right now. I can think of some other logos, but I don't believe they were ever used in prose fiction.
The only book-only logos I can think of, neither of which are weird, are the DS9 post-series books with no underline and the elegant TNG logo that started around the time of Resistance.
This, or nothing. Though I admit to having an odd soft spot for this one, versions of which appeared on the AMT model kits and Mego toys in the 1970s, along with things like the book/record sets,The Star Trek Postcard Book, and even a few early LaserDisc sleeves.
Mostly unrelated, but I noticed they used the "TNG" font for some names in the opening credits for He-Man (2002). It kinda jumps out at you.
Wow, that one is like in the uncanny valley. Almost but not quite the real thing! That one does a good job of being consistent with the Generations/First Contact/Insurrection logos: Serpentine for the "STAR TREK," an elongated sans serif for the subtitle. (I've never quite gotten why the word "Titan" needs to appear twice, but it does look pretty neat on the physical copies with the matte and embossing.) Oh, awesome, I love catching stuff like that. (That distinctive A makes it east to spot, even if people use the lower case version without the horizontal lines.) The other font there looks to my eyes like Handel Gothic, the font used for the Deep Space Nine credits! Someone was a fan!
I do respect Titan for maintaining a consistent cover design beginning, middle, and end. I think only Lost Era came close. Maybe Vanguard, but the first book is the outlier, which feels stranger to me than one or two weird ones in the middle (which is what happened with LE since One Constant Star revived the design from the original miniseries).
The Gold Key font is always gonna be my favourite. I loved the Discovery S1-2 and Picard S1 "subspace" font cos it reminded me of it.