Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1514626
K I L L E R S O F T H E F L O W E R M O O N G R A P H I C S | P E R S P E C T I V E 9 9 this was one of Apple's first big movies. After discussing my approach touching on a few of the projects I worked on for the show, I will venture into the current legal issues with fonts at the end of the article. It's a very complicated issue for our community. The Importance of Language and Typography Language is the foundation on which all graphic designers, both in entertainment and in the 'real' world, base their designs, because our communication needs to be something that most everyone can understand. Whether it's a factitious ancient story, a modern Chinatown street or space travel in the future—language and the look of the letterforms are where I often begin to find the right visual vocabulary for a period film. This could also involve having to translate our ideas accurately into French, Chinese, Arabic or a made-up new language—it all begins here. With this comes the challenge of deciding how well these letterforms, whether amateur or professional, should be rendered without them looking like I don't know what good lettering looks like. For Killers of the Flower Moon, which takes place in rural Oklahoma, it's important to realize that some building signage may not have been done by professional graphic designers. It could have been done by one settler who might have learned how to do lettering by buying one of the many popular books of the time, such as A.J. Hewett's 1919 book, Distinctive Lettering and Designs or W.A. Heberling's Basic Lettering from 1922. These professional schoolbooks, often available by mail, were written to be copied by graphic students and used when they started doing signs for actual businesses. When looking at period-sign research, I see the same letterforms from the books come up time and time again. I consider them the BEST resources for studying period typography because modern books often have their own prejudices and are unaware of how things looked before the advent of the computer. It's also true that computer 'fonts' are too well drawn, too perfect and don't look right on a period sign prior to 1990. As I started the show, I met with the clearance team at Apple that would be overseeing our efforts. Concerning fonts specifically, I was told that I could use all the fonts that came with my Apple computer and all the fonts that came with my Adobe subscription—an Apple license agreement would be needed for EVERY other font used, no matter how small it would appear in the finished product. For a show that takes place in the early 1920s, this left very few options. Classics like Bodoni, Century and Garamond were fine, but the rest were all too late to be of any help. What to do? Realizing that this was a show where most of the signage should have a hand-drawn look anyway, C. PERIOD FONTS CREATED BY KAREN TENEYCK. C