Exocet (typeface)
 | |
| Category | Display |
|---|---|
| Designer(s) | Jonathan Barnbrook |
| Foundry | Emigre |
 | |
| Sample | |
Exocet is a typeface designed by the British typographer Jonathan Barnbrook for the Emigre foundry in 1991. It was originally designed for the European annual series Illustration Now.[1]
The font is inspired by ancient incised Greek and Roman letter carvings,[1] with geometric shapes used for the main construction. For example, its stylized Q is based on qoppa, an ancient form of Q. The O with a cross (
) is an early form of theta.
It is an all-capital font, but with different capital glyphs for both lowercase and capital letters. However, the only letter that have visually distinct forms is T, with the lowercase t being a cross.
Variants
It is available in “light” and “heavy” varieties. There is no italic.
A sans version of the font from the same designer, called Patriot, was released in 1997 and is available from Virus.
Notable uses
It was used extensively for product designs in the 1990s, most notably for the American tea company Tazo. It can be seen in the 1993 movie Demolition Man where it is used extensively in the museum scene.[2] It was also used in the film Dogma, the film Star Trek Nemesis, the Dungeons and Dragons campaign setting Planescape, the English translation of the Korean manhwa Priest, the Diablo computer game series and the Sony PlayStation scrolling shooter game Einhänder. The stylized Q logo from the Quake series of videogames is thought to be a modification of the exocet Q.
See also
References
- 1 2 Virus Fonts: Exocet, retrieved 2011-10-09
- ↑ Jonathan Barnbrook (1996-12-07). "Demolition Man Font". Newsgroup: comp.fonts. Usenet: virus-0712961921400001@virus.easynet.co.uk. Retrieved 2007-07-15.