the monkey puzzle: fonts

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February 18, 2002

fonts - handel gothic

I see that one of the link memes of the past few days has been an article about the ubiquitous font Arial (and its becoming-forgotten predecessor Helvetica). Lately I've been noticing the utter commonness of another font, which I think is called Handel Gothic. You know the one. Round, pitchfork-like "e", with an apparent futuristic look and feel, which I'm guessing is the reason for its popularity right now. I've seen it used in the following places :

Sub Zero, one of the first alcoholic sodas to hit the market in Australia, back in 1995, I think. They've always used this font.
Adidas deodorant - the name of the different varieties (called names like "dynamic", "team", and whatever it is) is printed in this font at the bottom of the can.
A t-shirt I bought a few months back by some mob called Spiewak printed the company's name in this font on the little cardboard label.
San Miguel Beer uses it in their current advertisement campaign on buses and trams and tramstops and such.
Whilst wandering around the Dick Smith store this arvo, I noticed that the DVD of Madonna's Drowned World Tour used it, too.
Plastered to various walls and poles on main roads were ads for a couple of gigs that used the font - one for Groove Armada, another for somebody called Anna Vissi.

I'm hoping the future doesn't really have that many fork-like e's in it.

17:59 miscellaneous

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Comments (5)

Graham:

Oh yeah, that's in stacks of places. I don't which is worse, that or Bank Gothic.

Posted by Graham | February 18, 2002 11:12 PM

Posted on February 18, 2002 23:12

acb:

I'd blame the rise of rave/club/DJ culture; anything technoey is "in" (witness CUB's "techno beer" brand, the one with those consumer-electronics-icon stencils, for example). And this font is the typographical equivalent of 909 hi-hats in an ad.

Posted by acb | February 19, 2002 1:04 AM

Posted on February 19, 2002 01:04

Graham:

Techno beer? Isn't that a contradiction?

Posted by Graham | February 20, 2002 11:37 PM

Posted on February 20, 2002 23:37

cos:

...not when it's got guarana in it, I s'pose.

Posted by cos | February 21, 2002 8:50 AM

Posted on February 21, 2002 08:50

Amerist:

Zend uses this font for it's PHP logos!!

Posted by Amerist | February 22, 2003 4:36 AM

Posted on February 22, 2003 04:36

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