9 comments

  • Weston VierreggerWeston Vierregger, 5 years ago

    That may be giving the designers of The Post too much credit — it feels as likely that they ran out of time and just picked the first font they saw in the drop-down menu.

    lol. fuck this person.

    i can almost guarantee there are multiple comps/files on some lowly L.A. designer's computer where they tried to use the WaPo blackletter as the title. these posters go through a sausage factory of dickheads in suits and what hits press isn't necessarily what the designer wanted.

    poster is good regardless. this article is garbáge.

    12 points
  • Darren Treat, 5 years ago

    What an incredibly lazy article.

    Let's say this clearly:

    "The Post" is not about a newspaper.

    If it was a touching documentary about the founding and details about the Washington Post then maybe the logo font would be appropriate, however; this is not a movie about a newspaper.

    This is a movie about civil and personal honesty and making dangerous choices for the betterment of others. The Washington Post and it's office is simply the medium and the setting. To use the logo font would be to try to appropriate the company brand onto something that is NOT about the company. It would be poor design and dishonest. Even worse, it would be hard to read any other content. (Even on the Washington Post website, three fonts are used, Logo font for the logo, Serif for headlines, and sans-serif for body text. Fun Fact, a Helvetica variant is the second body text font option after an embedded font.)

    Helvetica was chosen because it is clear and readable and does not take away from the content. That fit the goals of the advertisement. That's it.

    3 points
    • Jake BarryJake Barry, 5 years ago

      To add to Darren’s point, even if The Washington Post logo or a “newspaper-y looking” serif (good god) would have made the movie look like something from WP and wouldn’t stand out as this design does (I would guess that had they gone that direction, many would scroll past/miss the poster subconsciously because many of us see the WP logo every day). Using Helvetica helps this movie differentiate from a branding perspective, while not injecting a strong aesthetic otherwise. The decision to set the cast billing in a larger type size than the title leads to this conclusion as well.

      I haven’t seen The Post yet, but given the period covered, this branding fits the era as well (I realize this borders contradiction with what I said above, but hopefully this makes some sense).

      1 point
  • John KarlssonJohn Karlsson, 5 years ago

    did The Post opt for a typeface that is more at home in the direction manual for the Utåker from Ikea?

    IKEA has never used Helvetica. They used Futura and now Verdana.

    2 points
    • James Young, 5 years ago

      That kind of jumped out, even among so many poor observations in the article. IKEA I'd say are pretty famous (at least in design circles) for their use of Verdana.

      3 points
  • Jan ZhengJan Zheng, 5 years ago

    the use of the stairs reminds me of the poster for the movie Moon.

    Also, keep in mind that Washington DC uses Helvetica for the DC Metro.

    I think it's also jarring and different enough to distance itself from a poster design that screams "hey look we are a movie about newspapers so let's use a newspaper typeface" — just how the Moon poster isn't a generic "space scifi" poster

    2 points
  • ChrisArchitec t, 5 years ago

    ha, I definitely thought was lazy/generic poster design when I saw it. Joked that Hanks and Streep were just photoshopped on top also. Never really considered it a negative slight versus the 'traditional' newspaper-y Post gothic typeface...... more that it was an easy play at 'political drama/serious movie' type messaging

    1 point
  • Tyler RenfroTyler Renfro, 5 years ago

    Typeface*

    0 points