How to make your text look futuristic (2016) | Hacker News Reader

How to make your text look futuristic (2016)

typesetinthefuture.com

500 points_vaporwave_60 comments

At the 1996 ATypI meeting in Den Haag, one of the speakers coined the term “sterotypography” to refer to certain cliches that get used in type usage. Another case of this is the use of Neuland and Neuland Inline to represent Africa, and of course the assortment of faux Chinese fonts that were ubiquitous on Chinese takeout menus in the 80s and 90s (and probably still are, but are there still takeout menus in the era of Grubhub?).

We use this sort of short hand all the time.

There's "ye olde" in a gothic font.

Walk into a super market, every product is giving you non textual clues as to what it is, and why it's different from the identical thing right next to it.

You notice the odd ones out because you have to stop and work out what the thing is.

Edit. An example is spreadable 'butter', in the UK and Europe you can't say it's butter, it doesn't say it's butter, but I bet most people have never noticed that because it's in butter type packaging with the design language you'd expect.

Does the Back To The Future logo really count? Raiders of the Lost Ark as a very similar style but does not evoke "future". Yes, there are subtle differences. My point is, if you divorced them from the connection to their content I think it would be hard to point to one as "future" and the other as "not future"

The future always has context.

The typeface could not be more different between the two. One is a sans serif font with many of the factors the author called out. The other calls back to hand illustration and comics IMO.

What is the same is the color scheme and gradient. This likely is more about what was in style at the time for movie posters. You can also justify this is representive of the past part of back to the future.

They had top men working on the logo. Top men.

Needs a (2016)

> Posted on February 18, 2016 by Dave Addey

Great read otherwise, I know the author mentions their book, I do wonder if he covers the history of how these fonts came to be so standard... for future stuff

As someone who has read the book, it does go through the history and inspiration of modern sci-fi typeset. Great coffee table book. Mainly expands on the articles on the website with more details and graphics.

Might have to snag it, and like you say, keep it laying around as a coffee table book somewhere. :)

"Somewhere"

Probably my bookshelf lol

And then there is the papyrus font for avatar…

They can't keep getting away with it!

Avatar 6 and 7 planned (there's a joke there somewhere).

Papyrus on the big screen 'til mid-to-late 2030s.

For those who don't get it https://youtu.be/jVhlJNJopOQ

At least it wasn't Comic Papyrus...?

It's tribal, yet futuristic.

I know what you did!

He just... highlighted Avatar. He clicked the dropdown menu, and then he randomly selected Papyrus. Like a...Like a thoughtless child just wandering by a garden, just yanking leaves along the way.

Not to forget the Orion Pictures logo:

https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Orion_Pictures

Funny. I just googled this site 2 hours ago for a font inspiration for a makerspace logo.

Michroma is a Google Font alternative for Eurostile.

Given the name you'd think it would be an alternative for Microgramma, but no, no - just look at the internal corners on letters like N, W, and V. In Microgramma they'd be flattened off but in Michroma and Eurostile they come to a point.

But Star Wars isn't from the future. Does that mean there is a time loop in fonts?

"This has happened before and it will happen again."

Somewhere, an LLM trained on this and can now produce cliche future fonts.

Is the Trajan fad over yet?[1]

[1] https://letterboxd.com/sethpaul/list/trajan-the-typeface-tha...

Typeset in the future was awesome, too bad it stopped updating

I love just how dated some of these futuristic fonts now seem, having grown up with most of them

Yes brings me back to the 80s demo scene…

Not only that, this article had the same feel of an old ANSI scene graffiti tutorial (I think it was made by the ACiD team

For maximum demoscene impact you need a metal gradient, like the European Megadrive logo.

I dunno, it’s kinda futuristic, but it’s missing the faux 3d effect where it appears to have warped up close to you and left a trail of light behind it, like the Star Trek example of the end. Nothing says “future” like fake 3d effects.

FWIW, ST:TNG only used the faux 3D effect for the season that aired on the year of Star Trek’s 25th anniversary. Subsequent seasons reverted to the 2d text.

Some of this is based on the 1966 Star Trek logo:

https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series

Raumpatrouille Orion also from 1966 used a similar font style:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raumpatrouille_%E2%80%93_Die_p...

I reckon this style originated much earlier from the fonts used on the covers of science fiction books and magazines.

My first thought was "that's just the star trek font".

A genuinely fun post.

I agree! A refreshing interlude to the cybersecurity postmortems and corporate layoff news.

I kind of wish they had used something other than Eurostyle for the starting font in their example since it is already a font that has become associated with sci-fi.

Still a great article though! More of this please!

I think the author is aware: https://typesetinthefuture.com/2014/11/29/fontspots-eurostil...

Nice! Thanks!

Racing in from the distant future comes StarTrek, and it even has a star field in the background! The hidden trick to take your text into the future.

Ironically (I’m sure with intent). This looks super 80s.

> the devastating Kern Wars of 2067

Do we know who won those wars?

To be honest I've had a lot of difficulty telling the two sides apart

From the result there, looks like each faction got to keep some terrain.

Had the other side won, we would know them as the Kem Wars.

Revenge is a typeface best served with Serifs

Keeeeerrrrrrrrrrrnnn!!

Missing The Terminator. Also applies to Wipeout, a game with some of my favorite logo and design work.

The Designers Republic! https://www.thedesignersrepublic.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Designers_Republic

I like how the first like made the entire mobile browser go yellow, even the buttons. How did they do that?

In 2016 to make text look futuristic it would require using — (m dash) a lot, and maybe …

Almost exactly the playbook I followed (unwittingly) when designing a logotype for my Playdate game recently:

https://play.date/games/hyper-vector/

this is exactly the ESPN logo as well

This should have a (2016)

Very tongue-in-cheek

Futura Free

    We want it to look like the text is stretching towards 2020

Sigh, if only :|

Who knew back then that we'd go from less design to no design at all produced by machines.

OMG I died laughing at this. Then I came back to life. And died again.

Is this a joke..?

only if you don't get it

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