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The Typeset of Wall·E (2018)
- agalunar 2y agoThe title of the submission should be changed to “Type in Wall·E”, “Typesetting in Wall·E”, or “Typography in Wall·E”; the word “typeset” is a verb or past participle, not a noun.
- nuancebydefault 2y agoIn fact what they meant is 'typeface' , a fancy word for what's often (wrongly) referred to as 'font'.
- pvorb 2y agoReally nice article! I'm not sure about the poster though. This is not necessarily communist, as this was just the style of propaganda posters of all kinds, that came up in the first half of the 20th century. Personally, it reminds me more of a Nazi poster for the army, which includes tanks that look similar to these robots: https://c8.alamy.com/compde/r90frb/ss-freiwilligen-panzer-grenadier-brigade-nederland-alte-niederlandische-ns-propaganda-poster-r90frb.jpg https://c8.alamy.com/compde/r90frb/ss-freiwilligen-panzer-gr...
- bityard 2y agoA few of the claims were certainly a bold stretch, including this one. But yeah, it's a fun read regardless.
- digging 2y agoYes, I found this statement: > The implication of this design choice—that communist values are the solution to decades of rampant consumerism Completely absurd. The association is not with communism, but with propaganda posters. It's true that Americans are commonly conditioned to associate propaganda posters with communism, but the assertion above is an unreasonable leap.
- casenmgreen 2y agoA very interesting and enjoyable article.
- joering2 2y ago"A Wuppertal Schwebebahn monorail train arrives at the Werther Brücke station in Wuppertal, 1913." Somewhat off topic, but stuff like this always leads me back to this reconstructed video from 1902. It feels like you almost there. I cannot fantom all these people walking peacefully now are dead, and they never heard of silicon circuit, let alone internet or an iPad. Worth watching once or twice a year it always makes me appreciate my life just few inches more... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQfPyx_678g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQfPyx_678g
- bb88 2y agoI still remember this golden article from that same site: https://typesetinthefuture.com/2014/01/31/2001-a-space-odyssey/ https://typesetinthefuture.com/2014/01/31/2001-a-space-odyss... While he’s doing so, there’s a dramatic… COMPUTER MALFUNCTION …in the hibernation pods, which causes the life support machines of the hibernating science crew to start reporting… LIFE FUNCTIONS CRITICAL …and end up with their… LIFE FUNCTIONS TERMINATED …which isn’t what they wanted AT ALL. Still: if it is going to happen, it may as well happen in what is probably Univers 67 Bold Condensed.
- temporarely 2y agoaside: WALL-E's story is strangely analogous to the mystic journey of a seer. This includes the precise steps of (a) isolation (b) love (c) rejection (d) hero's voyage (e) androgyny (c.f. WALL-E in the space ship), (f) spiritual fight, (g) the 'kiss' (h) the 'return' (j) union and establishment of a new earthly life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces
- ben_ 2y agoCool article but this first bit threw me off > The interpunct is still in use today—it’s the official decimal point in British currency (£9·99) When the linked wiki specifically points out that it isn't: > In British typography, the space dot was once used as the formal decimal point.
- llimos 2y agoAnd the government website doesn't use it [1]. So hard to see in what sense it's "official". [1] https://www.gov.uk/passport-fees https://www.gov.uk/passport-fees
- Sharlin 2y agoTo be fair, traditionally 95% of digital content has zero amount of typographical finesse and simply uses whatever is available in the local standard keyboard layout. Even the use of em and n dashes is a big deal.
- ascorbic 2y agoTrue, but not in the case of gov.uk typography, which has had a huge amount of thought put into it. e.g. https://designnotes.blog.gov.uk/2022/12/12/making-the-gov-uk-frontend-typography-scale-more-accessible/ https://designnotes.blog.gov.uk/2022/12/12/making-the-gov-uk... https://www.gov.uk/guidance/style-guide/a-to-z-of-gov-uk-style https://www.gov.uk/guidance/style-guide/a-to-z-of-gov-uk-sty...
- dcminter 2y agoThe decimal currency in the UK is essentially the same age as me - and I have never heard this claim that an interpunct is somehow more official. So the claim stood out to me as being outlandish; not impossible, just super unlikely. To show I have no ill will toward outlandish Britishisms, this one applied in Parliament until relatively recently... "To increase their appearance during debates and to be seen more easily, a Member wishing to raise a point of order during a division was, until 1998, required to speak with his hat on. Collapsible top hats were kept for the purpose." https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/commons-information-office/g07.pdf https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/commons-inf...
- navaed01 2y agoI really enjoyed this
- eulgro 2y agoImpressing how much detail went into things nearly all viewers never see.
- cchi_co 2y ago[dead]
- esalman 2y agoFunnily enough, one of the viewers is my 3yo son. For the last few days, he's been watching it from the beginning every night at dinner time.
- monitron 2y agoFor sure! But just because you don’t “see” it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a huge impact on the feel of the movie, your impression of the characters, and on the storytelling, which is ultimately why these “invisible” decisions were made :)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- SiempreViernes 2y ago> “10^6” in the corner, and are marked “ten million dollars.” Being a factor of ten off when writing out such a common SI prefix as Mega is a bit impressive.
- lowq 2y agoNot to mention, 99^6 = 941,480,149,401 ≠ 99,000,000 (which TFA also quotes). But who's to say notation didn't degrade along with the rest of society? :^)
- fhars 2y agoProbably designed by one of those young whippersnappers who never used a slide rule and confused 10^6 with 10e6, because that is how you enter big numbers on a calculator.
- Sharlin 2y agoGiven that 99^6 is supposed to mean 99,000,000, it seem clear that the superscript is not meant to be exponentiation but rather just denote the number of zeroes following (ie. short for scientific notation à la the 99e6 syntax used in programming languages.)
- kevin_thibedeau 2y agoHyperinflation requires austerity measures.
- eesmith 2y agoI think the idea is that in the financial world of 2100, when on currency, 10⁶ should be read as short-hand for 10E6, not 1E6. Thus, 99⁶ should be interpreted as 99E6, hence 99 million, as the author says. We know already that SI isn't universally followed. As a rough comparison, if a food item contains 160 calories, we know that's 160 kilocalories - and calorie isn't an SI unit. Or, 1GB of RAM is often 1024^3 bytes, with relatively fewer people using GiB.
- adamomada 2y ago
- sksksk 2y agoThe most interesting thing for me was the Iconian Fonts website. One guy who is a "commercial transaction attorney for a global software and service company", that makes fonts as a hobby. On his commerical use page, he just asks for a $20 donation if you use a font commercially. I wonder if he realised that his fonts would be used in billion dollar movie franchises.
- Tao3300 2y agoPer user/seat, so if they were honorable about it, it's probably a decent amount.
- qingcharles 2y agoThis man has created six hundred fonts...!
- Log_out_ 2y agoI wouldnt care about the money but i would care about the credits.
- crazygringo 2y agoFun fact: long credits at the end of the movie were invented by George Lucas for American Graffiti in 1973 [1]. He didn't have the money to pay everyone so he offered to put their names in the credits instead. And thus started a new chapter in the exploitation of film crews, where you don't get paid enough but hey, at least your name is in the credits. All the other producers were immediately like -- that's a genius idea to pay the crew less! So now all movies (and even TV shows) are full of hundreds and often even thousands of names in the credits. [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069704/trivia/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069704/trivia/
- InDubioProRubio 2y agoIn my opinion dystopianess is transported, the more you hold the now as contrast against the old. Take bladerunner- the presence of mechanical animals -the holograms of greenery, the presence of once beautiful buildings (like the Bradburry) held against a industrial produced, soulless item, highlights the decay and despair. In this case, a caligraphy font https://www.1001fonts.com/calligraphy-fonts.html https://www.1001fonts.com/calligraphy-fonts.html used, ocassionally on real signs, would be a great way to show the road into the dystopia. The Hello Dolly footage servers + trinkets serves a similar function.
- Amorymeltzer 2y agoThe book (<https://typesetinthefuture.com/2018/12/11/book/ https://typesetinthefuture.com/2018/12/11/book/>) is a fun read, too! I think it was David Plotz who said "read more books with pictures." Interviews, gorgeous looking, and does a good job showing the whole world you can miss by just watching a movie once (or even twice) without really seeing everything. It gives a good sense, too, of how movies first create the standards for "future" and then proceed to subvert or reference those standards.
- jeegsy 2y agoI just love the immersion that articles like these provide
- Terr_ 2y ago> The interpunct is still in use today [...] decimal point [...] dot product [...] separate titles, names, and positions Some·times it is it al·so seen To cla·ri·fy the way That syl·la·bles and me·ter meet In things we say to·day Which ex·tends from hea·vy use In pla·ces not so mer·ry For proof of this phen·o·men·on Con·sult a dic·tion·ary
- agalunar 2y agoThose aren’t syllable divisions, they’re hyphenation points! From the footnote on page 219 of Word by Word by Kory Stamper (formerly a lexicographer at Merriam-Webster): > Here is the one thing that our pronunciation editor wishes everyone knew: those dots in the headwords, like at “co·per·nic·i·um,” are not marking syllable breaks, as is evident by comparing the placement of the dots with the placement of the hyphens in the pronunciation. Those dots are called “end-of-line division dots,” and they exist solely to tell beleaguered proof-readers where, if they have to split a word between lines, they can drop a hyphen.
- Terr_ 2y agoFair 'nuff, so a small patch would be: - Which ex·tends from hea·vy use + Which re·sem·bles hea·vy use I'd argue in both cases the dot is serving an additional role (beyond those mentioned in the article) of marking significant positions within a word.
- ant6n 2y agoIsn’t that equivalent to syllable splits — since words are split on syllable boundaries?
- IIsi50MHz 2y agoNot always, because single-letter breaks like the following are usually forbidden: ```…leak- y…``` ```…A- hab…```
- agalunar 2y agoTo save someone the lookup, this is: U+00B7 MIDDLE DOT = midpoint (in typography); Georgian comma; Greek middle dot (ano teleia) • also used as a raised decimal point or to denote multiplication; for multiplication 22C5 is preferred But note there is a separate Unicode scalar value for the dot operator: U+22C5 DOT OPERATOR • preferred to 00B7 for denotation of multiplication
- nlawalker 2y ago> BnL uses the exact same typeface and color scheme as real-world retail giant Costco Wholesale Corporation. Made my whole day, fantastic.
- alfredogonsales 2y ago[flagged]
- dtagames 2y agoThe article's title really downplays how much terrific cultural analysis there is here. This write-up has great depth, not only on typography but also architecture, art styles, film, and music! Many links and reference images, too. A worthwhile read that I thoroughly enjoyed.
- ascorbic 2y agoThe title of the submission makes no sense either, and doesn't match the source. "Typeset" is a verb, and is used here as a pun on "set in the future". It doesn't mean "typeface" or "typography".
- wccrawford 2y agoI'm afraid this is probably another word that will get accepted with new uses. I didn't actually know it was only a verb and the title made perfect sense in my head. I imagine that's true for most people who read it.
- BrandoElFollito 2y agoFor non native English speakers it means "the font used in Wall-E". I was quite surprised by the first comment because I did not expect that a font was so emotional (especially that I do not remember any particular fonts in the movie)
- niteshpant 2y agoI thoroughly enjoyed reading this - so well done and thought out
- chefandy 2y agoIt's funny how big of a difference perspective makes. I think this is a neat portrayal of how differently designers and engineers reason about design topics. I was surprised to see an article about type that didn't involve code editors so heavily upvoted on HN, but as soon as I read the first few paragraphs, I realized why-- it was clearly written by an engineer that has learned a lot about design, and not a designer. There's nothing wrong with that! It's a cool and very well-researched design history deep dive that explores the network of references and roots of the type used, how it was used as a storytelling element, and that sort of thing. If this was written by a type designer, they'd have been discussing very different things-- why the letterform shapes hit like they do, what design problems they solve, the conceptual and emotional references these shapes make rather than which concrete symbols they relate to, the general rounded square shapes, their negative space, how the lack of stroke contrast makes it hit differently than similar less uniform characters, kerning concerns, etc. For example, here's Matthew Carter-- one of the more famous type designers-- digging into some of the more unusual type design he's done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RojKQ-w9zn8&t=745s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RojKQ-w9zn8&t=745s The person that wrote this article knows a lot more about how this type is used from a modern art perspective, but there's a difference between knowing art history and being able to wield the underlying principles to work with these things as an artist or designer. I think a good example of this is film fans that spend a lot of time on TV Tropes an the like, which are rather like informal film critics. That knowledge is a base requirement for great critical analysis, but if I needed to hire someone to create a film, I'd favor an undergrad film student that was in diapers when the film fan started digging into TV Tropes. Why? It's just a fundamentally different way of reasoning about the same thing. The fan is more concerned with the "whats" and "whens", and the student is more concerned with the "hows", and that gives each of them have a totally different perspective on the "whys". I think creators need to watch out with this. Especially in the nerdier genres, if they're so focused on the film itself that they disregard factors like context and overall story continuity, watching that film is a meaningfully worse experience because they're often more invested in the universe/characters/etc. than they are with the making any give story arc or character pop for a given movie. On the other hand, if we hand too much control to the people primarily interested in the context and story continuity at the expense of any individual film's story and artistic value... well... have you seen the Star Wars prequels? Back to the article, I could see someone without education in type design reading this article getting the impression that they understand the typographical elements in this film. They definitely understand how the typography was used, but that's a lot different than being able to reason about these things like designers do. A more concrete example would be an in-depth article about the cars in the fast and furious movies, complete with the cultural references of each modification and the purposes they serve. It would be cool and informative, but it wouldn't bring the reader any closer to being an auto designer. A lot of developers, in particular, get annoyed when I push back against their misconceptions about design. It's not an insult-- it's just not their area of expertise. Usually, they don't know enough about it to realize how little they know about it-- like anybody else with any deep topic they don't know. I've heard designers that have cargo-culted tutorial code into some wordpress plugin spew absolute nonsense about everything from data structures to network architecture with the confidence of someone that just got accepted to a prestigious CS doctoral program. That said, it's easier for non-technical people to see that they don't understand software development because it's easy to see they don't understand the terse error messages, stack traces, code syntax, terminology, etc. It's more difficult in the other direction. Visual design, broadly, is visual communication; for a design to be good, at a bare minimum, it must present cohesive messages or ideas to its intended audience. Many things that look the simplest while still solving all of their goals were the most difficult to make-- you can tell when non-designers copy it because it might look simple, but it probably doesn't effectively communicate everything it needs to-- and that's every bit as true for UI design as it is branding and identity design, and poster design. The complexity in that process is only apparent if you've tried to solve difficult, specific communication problems with a bunch of real-world constraints, grappled with the semiotics, tried to make it stand out, etc. etc. etc. and then had it torn apart by people who've done it a lot longer than you. I can see why someone that doesn't understand what's happening under the hood thinks a designer's main job is making things attractive, like an amateur interior decorator. In reality, that's not even always a requirement-- it often is a natural result of properly communicating your message. What we do is more akin to interior architecture: the functionality comes first. So the next time you see someone suggesting something like allowing custom color themes to your app to "improve UX," maybe consider consulting an experienced UI or UX designer to see what they think. If their suggestions revolve around making it prettier or hiding everything behind menus because functionality is ugly, I conceptually owe you a beer.
- ant6n 2y agoI am getting the book. But is there a pdf version somewhere? (I wish physical books would just come with a pdf version)