Typography

Radiohead Poster





The font shown here is a twirling, sketchy, jester-like art that produces a shady, monstrous, under-the-bed effect that looks similar to a black cat with it’s hairs standing on end. The smaller text underneath uses the same font but on a different scale, making it a scratchy patch of writing, and although it might be hard to read from far away, still produces the desired effect for the sake of this poster, which is for Radiohead, a band that would enjoy that kind of visual scrabble style. Notice the use of circles within the text, inside the “O” of “Radiohead” and between the numbers on the date. I theorize that the use of this shape is geared towards maintaining the silly, curvy style of text. The text is quite effective in appealing to Radiohead’s demographic, which favour the dark, haywire atmosphere of the band.



"Billy Talent 2" Album Cover




The font above appears to be “Impact”, or if not, it appears to be influenced by it. The album title, “Billy Talent 2” is slapped center, just above the bold picture of a screaming mouth, as the absolute hook of the album cover. It certainly does make an “impact” on the viewer, and it’s blocky, pitch-black, overt style conveys a musical genre that is heavy, in-your-face, and bold – which is good, because the band’s punk rock sound also fit these descriptions. The space in-between letters are also very small, which produces an air of straightforwardness, and even the words are positioned close to each other. Together, the title and the screaming mouth make for a very effectively aggressive album cover geared towards lionhearted teenagers.


"The Butterfly Effect" Movie Poster






The font in the cover for “The Butterfly Effect” seems to mimic the text inked into test tubes/beakers found in an ordinary laboratory – some letters are even slightly smudged out for realism. It’s red color, complimentary of Kutcher’s red eye, gives the text an eerie, ominous, science-experiment-gone-wrong effect that is accentuated by the thinness of the letters, sharing characteristics with bugs and insects, and the spaces in-between letters and words, which gives it a dreamy, floating atmosphere. I would say that this text is very effective in capturing the spirit of the movie, which is also weaved into an eerie atmosphere, constant references to science and laboratories, and entirely linked to one symbolic insect, characterized in this light by skinniness and twitchiness, the butterfly.