Stuff I Found Online, late January 2014

[major_clanger]

Typeset in the Future, a blog by someone who shares my interests in both typography and science fiction, and has set out to take a comprehensive look at the use of the former in the latter. First up is the typography of 2001: A Space Odyssey; the focus of the blog means that some parts of the film get less attention than you might otherwise expect:

This final part of the film is visually eclectic, aurally stunning and philosophically challenging. Many thousands of words have been penned over the decades to try and fathom the meaning of the monolith, and the genesis and future of the space-baby. However, none of this act contains typography, and it is therefore of no concern to us. Let’s skip to the end credits.

I wonder what will be looked at next? The Prisoner famously adopted a variant on Albertus, while early 70s BBC sf featured a lot of Data 70, which was apparently the only font that the White Heat of Technology would leave intact. Over on ITV, Gerry Anderson's shows featured a lot of both Eurostile and the very similar Microgramma; indeed, the deliberate heavy use of the former in 2009's Moon contributed a lot to its 70s-sf feel. It is such fun to discover someone who geeks out over exactly the same thing you do, only so much better (and blogs about it.)

(ETA: And following one of the links from that post about Moon shows that according to the VFX Supervisor the dummy screen of the base's entertainments library deliberately includes my favourite spoof of 70s BBC science programming!)

Filming in Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter, from the Birmingham Television & Filming Locations blog. I hadn't realised we lived in quite such a hotbed of filming locations, although the area around our Chambers at Cornwall Street certainly gets used quite a bit (as I've noted before), probably because the mix of buildings means that you can do anything from late Victorian to contemporary very easily, and the nearby roads are side streets that are easy to block off.

Comments

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

If this is his very first blog entry, how did that guy get so many commenters?

... a blog by someone who shares my interests in both typography and science fiction...

As you probably realize, this is exactly the sort of phrase that comedy writers used to denote nerds, that is to say, people more or less like us. It would be delivered by an actor in a nasal tone. The actor would likely be wearing eyeglasses with a visibly taped repair.

When I watched Moon, I began to suspect that every single bit of text apparent in the film was in Eurostile. Haven't re-watched to see whether this is true. I am not above such a thing, but I have not taken the time yet.

Speaking of nerds, I became familiar with Microgramma Bold Extended when I started reading the PyroTechnics, the fanzine Jeff Duntemann founded around 1975. It was a newsletter for General Technics, a group for "techies"-- people today might call them "makers"-- within SF fandom. This was, of course, named, with John Brunner's permission, for the giant conglomerate at the center of Stand on Zanzibar.

I suppose Letraset's waxy rub-on sheets of Microgramma Bold Extended were the most techie-looking text to Jeff's eye. Or maybe he had a lot of that typeface lying around. Anyway, he welded the capital G's crossbar to the top of the capital T, and put the all-caps name GENERAL TECHNICS beneath.

"Microgramma Bold Extended" was as much as a buzzword to that group as "555."

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Mr Addey seems to have a Twitter account with 3,000+ followers and a history of other blogging activity, so I'd imagine that having tweeted about the new blog it got a lot of attention quickly (being a very nicely-done and detailed discussion of a topic that a lot of us clearly find interesting.)

You're right about Moon; that font was deliberately used for everything.