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The Golden Child (Eddie Murphy poster, 1986)
Posted by heyjimtitus in
12 Apr 2011 — 6:51pm
12 Apr 2011 — 6:51pm
Here's a good look at the theatrical one-sheet art for this 80s Eddie Murphy comedy:
http://img.mspot.com/icache/dimg3.php?df=blankimage&ft=jpg&f=images/vod/...
Whatever they used for the title treatment has me thoroughly stumped. Can't get anything close to it. Anyone recognize it?
I think perhaps it's a composite of more than one face. The D is clearly different (just look at the serifs) from the other letters, and the C and G feel a little too different from each other.
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13 Apr 2011 — 1:37am
That looks like custom lettering, especially given its age. I've seen lots of similar things in calligraphy and lettering books from that era but not in type books.
13 Apr 2011 — 10:57am
Could be custom. If anyone can name something close, I'd appreciate it.
13 Apr 2011 — 11:21am
Hermann Zapf's Sistina is in the ballpark, but just barely...
13 Apr 2011 — 12:05pm
A search for calligraphic and roman on myfonts brings up a few things that might be suitable.
13 Apr 2011 — 6:38pm
It looks sooo similar to Trajan Bold that has been condensed to me. Some of the characters are almost exactly the same but then the N has a different top.
13 Apr 2011 — 6:38pm
It looks sooo similar to Trajan Bold that has been condensed to me. Some of the characters are almost exactly the same but then the N has a different top.
14 Apr 2011 — 8:24am
Thanks for the suggestions. None are very close though - strange. It has a lot more character than something like Trajan but fills much the same role. No surprise then that it showed up on an old Hollywood poster. Maybe I could recreate this face, provided of course I could ID it and then find something to scan.
Forgive my naivete, but does anyone on the board here know how the designers in the pre-digital age went about selecting faces for film titles on posters like this? I know they pulled from books, but have never seen one myself. Anyone know the titles of the books so I could start looking for them on ebay etc?
14 Apr 2011 — 8:53am
Most likely in this case they hired a lettering artist, who drew it from scratch. Just because something looks like it was a font doesn't mean it was a font. The further you go back, the more this is true.
15 Apr 2011 — 1:00pm
Anyone know the titles of the books so I could start looking for them on ebay etc?
The Speedball manuals or the many volumes of Dover alphabets are a good place to start. I've found a lot of good books on eBay simply searching under "lettering book". Some mid-20th Century gems that are fairly common in the US include "Modern Brush Lettering" by Harold Holland Day and "ABC of Lettering" by Carl Holmes. Type specimens would be used as reference just as much as books of hand-lettered alphabets.
However, an experienced lettering artist would probably draw a roman serif like this without the need for any reference material. To make a digital font from this logo it would be better to learn how to build the missing letters from the information in the ones you've got, which Leslie Carbarga explains in his "Logo, Font and Lettering Bible" and Bruce Willen & Nolen Strals cover in "Lettering & Type", rather than expect to find a complete alphabet to scan and trace.
2 Oct 2011 — 10:50pm
Mark's correct,
My guess is that it was done via a calligraphy artist as well.
It does look like a font, but it simply is too old to be one IMO
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