An 'authentic' Necronomicon

Posted by Chris Rugen in

General Discussions

19 Feb 2004 — 6:57pm

The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society (NPLHS) are constructing a "complete 17th-century version of the fabled Necronomicon! Using a comprehensive set of custom-designed vintage fonts, artwork and text."

While the contest is related to writing passages, it'd be interesting to see (from a typographer's standpoint) whether their version would stand up to the rigorous scrutiny of the Typophiles.

Their goal is to make it a downloadable PDF that could be printed and bound (so I guess it'll be only so realistic). But they have some example woodcuts, decorative intitial caps, page decorations and some example PDF pages. They seem to be mining the real thing for their facsimile, but I'm sure they're slipping up a few times. The PDF is a good way to scrutinize.

If you're not familiar, here's some info on The Necronomicon from the man himself, H.P.

Mark Simonson
19 Feb 2004 — 7:30pm

One of the people involved with this (possibly the only one) is the talented prop maker Andrew Leman. He's really into this stuff, so I would think it would at least appear to be authentic, even if it's completely concocted.

I heard from him after writing my article about the use of type in movies (here). He seems to be one of the few people working in Hollywood who cares about type. He recently started selling some of his fonts on MyFonts, too.

kris
19 Feb 2004 — 10:58pm

>mining the real thing for their facsimile

I thought it was just made up? Who cares!
I want one! They seem to be having trouble
with the old-style s, unless that is how it
would have been set 'authentically' in metal.

what font are they using?

kennmunk
19 Feb 2004 — 11:07pm

They should get some kind of slight random-thing going on the fonts...

Anyway, Aren't you supposed to go crazy if you read it?

Ramiro Espinoza
20 Feb 2004 — 3:40am

>>"Anyway, Aren't you supposed to go crazy if you read it?"

Nope, but last time someone read the Necronomicon, shadows fell over the quiet city of Dunwich...

Chris Rugen
20 Feb 2004 — 6:20am

...and Innsmouth.

Thomas Phinney
20 Feb 2004 — 10:30am

You only go crazy if you *understand* it. Luckily for me, I don't read Latin at all.

As for the HPLHS and fonts, I've evaluated some of their freeware stuff, and it was pretty abysmal. Bad enough that I decided not to give them feedback because I didn't know where to start. They needed basic ideas like sidebearings sorted out. You can see this in the sample above. Compare the b-long-s pair with the "is" or "os" pairs.

That aside, these folks are great, and some of their other stuff is truly wonderful. I have bought quite a few copies of the "Shoggoth on the Roof" CD (though beware of imperfect reproductions). They also have tons of cool resources for live-action Call of Cthulhu role-playing.

Cheers,

T