Reagan Ray

The lettering in science fiction cinema can sometimes be more memorable than the movies themselves. Just about anyone in America would recognize the Star Wars logo, even if they haven't seen all nine films. As is the case with most of my logo posts, it's been fun to pick up on the trends. There's the trick where they remove the segments from the top half of the letters like Blade Runner, or the embossed brushed metal of Robocop. Glowing letters were a big trend that started in the late 80s, most likely set off by the Alien franchise. And I can never get enough of the 3D type in early films.

There are a lot of movies out there, so I ended up setting some guidelines on what to include, the first being no movies past the year 2000. That eliminated a bunch of superhero movies (which really should just be a genre of their own), and a bunch of mediocre lettering for great films (do you really care to see the typeface for Arrival?). In short, I made up some guidelines to make it more digestible and interesting. If I left one out, it's not a knock on the movie itself. But if you do find a nice little piece of lettering that I missed, reach out on Twitter and let me know.