Typophile - Fonts on LOST - Comments

>making it up as they went

sii — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 22:07:57 -0800

>making it up as they went along…

It’s an American tradition that starts at the very top. ;-)

for a while i stayed

Ch — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 19:15:52 -0800

for a while i stayed fascinated by the show like a sore tooth. i knew it was painfully bad, but i kept checking it out. replete with mixed up pseudo-spiritual iconography, ridiculous plot twists, atrocious acting, and inconsistent character portraits. for a while these questions really bugged me: why didn’t the korean characters mention that the dharma logo / taoist trigrams appear on the korean flag ? why doesn’t anyone mention that the ultimate number 108 is quasi-magical in some hindu traditions ? why doesn’t anyone notice that the infamous doomed numbers 4 8 15 16 23 42 are all streets in new york where A train exits are ?

then i heard one of the creators interviewed on steven colbert and i got my answer: they were winging it ! making it up as they went along... lame-o. it seems the design problems are just part of the same process. “ok, that’ll do for now”.

but i’m grateful, as that helped me lose interest.

We’re inbetween Seasons 2

Bald Condensed — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 15:23:40 -0800

We’re inbetween Seasons 2 and 3 here in Belgium, so I can’t check it anytime soon.

Hi could anyone tell me the

Ryan-C — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 17:06:00 -0800

Hi could anyone tell me the font they use on the credits text used after the 3D logo bit at the start of the show. The text is in the bottom left and bottom right alternatively.

Thanks!

> No. Just enjoy the show.

matthewabate — Mon, 5 Jun 2006 11:39:14 -0700

> No. Just enjoy the show. Relax. And enjoy it. And relax.

Good Idea. Besides, you can’t date anything in the hatch against anything else. Hurley and Libby make a comment about the newness of the washer and dryer (This years iconic LG machines must have been product placement) that is kind of a joke addressigng this very thing. Remember MR. Echo’s advice, “Don’t mistake coincidence fore fate.”

The 3 doesn’t look like

bakagaigin — Sat, 3 Jun 2006 22:05:45 -0700

The 3 doesn’t look like arial, the arial 3 has all those ugly diagonal cut-offs.

If you watch the Season 1

mathowie — Sat, 3 Jun 2006 08:00:21 -0700

If you watch the Season 1 DVD for Lost, somewhere in the extras JJ Abrams explains the title sequence, and why it looks different than the rest of the show.

When they were cutting an early preview version of the first episode for ABC execs, he did a quick title sequence on his mac (in flash I believe) using futura that was on his mac. When the execs saw it, they loved it and it apparently stuck around for the final version of the show, unchanged.

Anyone notice the quarantine

lunyboy — Tue, 4 Apr 2006 16:36:28 -0700

Anyone notice the quarantine typeface?

(Fuel+Fire=Fun)

Thanks for all your

Bald Condensed — Sun, 5 Mar 2006 02:27:53 -0800

Thanks for all your suggestions.

I asked this because I will be doing some features on type used for television series (Bank Gothic for 24, Clicker for CSI, FF Confidential for Alias, Trajan for Six Feet Under, Democratica for Carnivale and so on...), and the articles certainly would benefit from some illustrations.

Anybody has some more suggestions on interesting use of type in television series?

All my shots were obtained

nickfruhling — Fri, 3 Mar 2006 08:53:49 -0800

All my shots were obtained (legally) right from the “Previously On Lost” section of the ABC website at http://abc.go.com/fsp/index.html?channel=Lost

It’s actually quite nice quality and they have good 4 minute recaps of the episodes. The only downside is that you can’t fast-forward or rewind, just pause, hence the fact that some of my shots are less than optimal.

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You can do it in the Apple

Mark Simonson — Fri, 3 Mar 2006 07:20:51 -0800

You can do it in the Apple DVD player if you have Snapz Pro X.

Some of these are no doubt from files of broadcast shows downloaded from BitTorrent sites.

You can use VLC media

Chris Rugen — Fri, 3 Mar 2006 05:30:25 -0800

You can use VLC media player* and get around that. I use it to get sshots for my site. It’s not 100% easy to pause on the dot, but it works. Also, ’Lost’ is available on the Apple iTunes store, so maybe you can capture the image on video from there.

*for the Mac

A slightly unrelated

Bald Condensed — Fri, 3 Mar 2006 02:19:36 -0800

A slightly unrelated question — how do you people manage to make such nice screenshots? I heard from a colleague that you can’t make screenshots from a DVD playing on a ’puter. Is that correct?

Thanks for the additional

smarks — Thu, 2 Mar 2006 22:04:08 -0800

Thanks for the additional shots.

Hm, looks like the original poster was right. The ’1’ looks like Helvetica Black but the rest of the numerals (particularly the ’2’ in the first shot) look like Arial Extra Bold or something. Still a mystery why they’d mix. Maybe they first did it all in Arial, then somebody realized the ’1’ sucked.

s’marks

Dude?

Not the best shots, but I

nickfruhling — Thu, 2 Mar 2006 09:00:50 -0800

Not the best shots, but I think it clearly shows that the 1 is not an ugly old Arial 1.

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Fonts on LOST

smirkiston — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 06:47:01 -0800

I don’t know know whether this is really a question, or a statement, or whatever, but has anyone else looked at the fonts that are used on episodes of LOST?

The countdown timer inside the hatch is using Arial [except for the digit 1, which is in Helvetica], however most everything in the hatch looks like it’s from the 70s. So Arial wouldn’t have been around yet.

And then there’s that Apple II computer. Of course the computer display was done in post, but... why Palatino? Why there?

For some reason, those details bugged me so much I was looking at them frame-by-frame on the TiVo. Anyone care to add anyting to my ramble this morning? :)

mike