18/11/07
Harry Potter and the Order of Typography
After seeing Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix my lasting impression of the film was the gorgeous attention to detail to type style. From Daily Prophets to Weasly products, the loving care with which typefaces where chosen or drawn is to be praised. Rather than fall back on clichéd serif faces, chunky, slightly distressed, sans-serifs and slab serifs are used to give the film a unique feel. So when the DVD finally arrived last week, I couldn’t wait to take some screengrabs:
(If the slideshow doesn’t appear, you view the Original set on Flickr)
Uses FlickrShow
I’m not 100%, but I reckon that they’re using a mixture of Champion Gothic (sans-serif) and Ziggurat (serif), both by Hoefler and Frere Jones:
Also, thanks the Kottke for pointing me to this article on Design Observer, also talking about the Harry Potter visuals.
Tags: harrypotter, typography
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Kev Mears said 178 days ago:
I’ve added a comment on your set, but I’ll say it here too. The newspapers designs are great and remind me of Wyndham Lewis’ Modernist magazine BLAST. You can see for yourself in scans of the magazine.
Quite inspirational actually.
Andrew Green said 178 days ago:
“Vampire admitted to casualty after garlic bread” (slide 11) may be one of the best faux headlines ever!
Alistair said 178 days ago:
I don’t think the great typography is limited to the most recent Harry Potter. The attention to detail in all of the previous movies has also been very high in my opinion as well.
Matt Carey said 177 days ago:
We watched the film for the first time last night (cinema + babysitters = doesn’t happen) and were wowed by the typography. the newspapers were really nicely done.
Patrick Gage Kelley said 177 days ago:
Jon, I completely agree. And as for the newspaper designs I think some muggle newspapers should consider vertical headlines along the side of the text. It allows for longer headlines and looks really great.
hcabbos said 177 days ago:
What script do you use for displaying the pics up above? I love it. And although it appears you’re pulling from Flickr, is that script available for others to use?
Rob L. said 177 days ago:
@hcabbos: I do believe that’s flickrshow; it’s free and drop-dead easy to implement. http://www.flickrshow.com
So much to enjoy about the whole HP universe. I really can’t wait until my kids are old enough to read the books and watch the films.
Matt Munsey said 177 days ago:
I think they have done a great job with the type ever since Prisoner of Azkaban. I agree about the newspapers as well. I have tried to mimic how they text wrap around shapes to create such great designs with the negative space, but fail miserably every time. Whoever they have doing the design for the newspapers and the type in general is brilliant!
Bret said 177 days ago:
The type designers for the Harry Potter movies may be Alex Moseley and Roger Mills .
Jon Hicks said 177 days ago:
@hcabbos – it is indeed FlickrShow!
Nick Husher said 176 days ago:
I remember thinking throughout the movies that anything related to wizardry in the series was evocative of mid-19th-century culture. This is true from the signs, which use many different fonts, weights, and kerning, to the clothing, which tends to be predominantly wool or non-synthetic, to the architecture, to the technology (they take a steam train to school, how cool is that?).
Jon Hicks said 176 days ago:
@Bret – it doesn’t look like they used the Crazy Diamond folks in this film, the style is very different.
The closest I’ve come to the sans-serif is Elephant and Fatso, but neither are right.
tikitu said 176 days ago:
The designer of the newspapers presumably used vertical headlines because they don’t read easily: first thing you notice is the plot-related heads, it’s only on scrutinising the screen captures that you manage to make out the garlic bread story. (If I’m right, even more kudos to the designer: that’s a super-cool and super-clever move.) Sadly, I guess we don’t get these in the Times anytime soon.