Fun With Fonts

Recently, when working on my “Sherlock Holmes” theme for my Big Brothers Big Sisters “Bowling Theme” project, I wanted to know what font they used on the Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes movies.

I was pretty sure they used Clarendon (and I was right… it’s also the font that I used in making the graphics on this site), but I wanted to be sure. So I used the Google on the internets, and found FontFeed.

This most excellent site, which I hadn’t heard of previously, has a really cool column called “Screenfonts“. Basically, every month they round up the movie posters of movies that had been released that month and do basic reviews on them. The focus is on the font use, but they also make general remarks on the general layout and design, and they compare the posters to other posters that said posters had ripped designs off from.

Since then, I’ve actually spent a lot of hours not just reading that column (which I have been) but exploring more of their columns. It’s been a really fun experience — learning, without the hefty expense of going back to school. Plus, since I’ve been working on the bowling posters project, the reading is directly applicable to what it is I’m working on in real life.

If you haven’t already discovered that site, I suggest you check it out.

NOTES ON CLARENDON: I actually hadn’t heard of the font until about 2003, when U2 used it on the cover of their “U2 Go Home – Live From Slane Castle”. I hadn’t thought much of it at the time, but then they re-used it in 2004 for the cover of “How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb”. Funny how you get exposed to things… I’d had it available all that time, but until I noticed it on the album cover of my favourite band, I’d never thought to use it.

Since then, I have used it myself (obviously), but its use in Sherlock Holmes prompted a little more research, and I discovered Clarendon’s origins in Victorian era. So, I suspect U2’s designers probably just used it cause it was a bold and strong font… but it was actually quite fitting for Sherlock Holmes. I probably could have found an alternative, but that’s okay.

MORE NOTES ON CLARENDON: Turns out that it’s a rather popular movie poster font. Just on that one December page alone on the Screenfonts column, Clarendon showed up in three separate posters.