How to make your text look futuristic (2016)
227 points
6 hours ago
| 17 comments
| typesetinthefuture.com
| HN
dhosek
1 hour ago
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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?).
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giancarlostoro
6 hours ago
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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

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JK-Swizzle
6 hours ago
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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.
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giancarlostoro
5 hours ago
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Might have to snag it, and like you say, keep it laying around as a coffee table book somewhere. :)
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bit_savager
3 hours ago
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"Somewhere"
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bigethan
8 minutes ago
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this is exactly the ESPN logo as well
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genghisjahn
5 hours ago
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And then there is the papyrus font for avatar…
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jayd16
15 minutes ago
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It's tribal, yet futuristic.
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moron4hire
4 hours ago
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They can't keep getting away with it!
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nntwozz
4 hours ago
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Avatar 6 and 7 planned (there's a joke there somewhere).

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

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Izkata
3 hours ago
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At least it wasn't Comic Papyrus...?
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Animats
5 hours ago
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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...

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riffraff
6 hours ago
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Typeset in the future was awesome, too bad it stopped updating
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baigy
58 minutes ago
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> the devastating Kern Wars of 2067

Do we know who won those wars?

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mikestorrent
3 minutes ago
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To be honest I've had a lot of difficulty telling the two sides apart
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bhaak
2 hours ago
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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.

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harimau777
4 hours ago
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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!

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jameshart
3 hours ago
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harimau777
1 hour ago
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Nice! Thanks!
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xiaoyu2006
6 hours ago
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A genuinely fun post.
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ctippett
3 hours ago
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I agree! A refreshing interlude to the cybersecurity postmortems and corporate layoff news.
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mproud
2 hours ago
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Very tongue-in-cheek
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booleandilemma
3 hours ago
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My first thought was "that's just the star trek font".
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keyle
3 hours ago
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    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.

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sosomoxie
2 hours ago
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Ironically (I’m sure with intent). This looks super 80s.
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holotherapper
4 hours ago
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Futura Free
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QuercusMax
6 hours ago
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This should have a (2016)
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timebeforeland
5 hours ago
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Is this a joke..?
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dylan604
5 hours ago
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only if you don't get it
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