Typographic Almanac #01 - Milk

2009-07-30T15:45:00.050+10:00

In 2008, Gus Van Sant released his film “Milk,” which chronicles the political life of gay rights activist Harvey Milk up until his assassination in 1978. The film has won two Oscars, one for Best Male Lead, the other for Best Original Screenplay. But, I wonder, should it have also won the non-existent award for Most Historically Accurate Use of Type?

Now, while titles don’t need to strictly conform to a film’s period, we will take a look at them anyway because they reveal something interesting about how the designers do things.

Fig 1. Title Card

On first glance, this appears to be 1934s Rockwell Bold; and it is, which is historically fine. But if we look closer, we find something troubling — this type has been artificially condensed.

Fig 2. Title Card Diagram

It isn’t much of a problem here, as we’re just talking about a title card, but as we shall see later, this is not only an isolated occurrence. But before we move on, just one more thing:

Fig 3. Avant Garde Credits

Here is a more dramatic example of what I’m talking about. On blow-up, it is easy to see the degradation in the quality of each letterform.

Fig 4. Avant Garde Credits Blowup

Now, as Milk is quite a type-heavy film, my list of identified faces grew long very quickly. For this reason, I shall focus on pointing out the inaccuracies. This is probably more interesting anyhow.

Fig 5. Darkroom Supplies

So over on the right we ‘Darkroom Supplies’ set in Lubalin Graph. Herb Lubalin designed this slab-serif in 1974. Only problem is, this is 1972. 1973 at the latest. They were at least close though, there’s much worse to come.

Roughly 20 minutes into the film we are greeted by a series of 9 campaign flyers. One thing to note is that all of these have undergone digital processing in an attempt to suggest authenticity. This did cause some minor difficulty when testing possible typefaces by means of overlaying. But in the film, the first two flyers pass without displaying anything objectionable, but then we arrive at this:

Fig 6. Expand The Public Library

The first thing to note is the “Expand” text. Now while it looks like Helvetica, I was shocked to discover that it is in fact, Scangraphics' Europa Grotesk No. 2 SH Extra Bold.

Fig 7. Expand in Europa Grotesk No. 2

Finding information about the type family is difficult, though there has been some suggestion that it may be a Helvetica Neue clone, which would of course mean it was “designed” after 1983. Also, the “SH” in the font name refers to it being a “Headline” font, and Scangraphics did not start work on its Headline library until 1984, at least 10 years after the flyer is said to have existed. So clearly, the usage of this typeface is horribly inaccurate. But if you thought 10 years was a long way into the future, try 21. The other font on the flyer is Consort Bold Condensed. It was designed in 1994 and sure, it’s based on 1953s Consort, which was in turn based on 1845s Clarendon, but Milk had been dead for 16 years before these letters ever saw the light of day.

Fig 8. More Consort Condensed

Seconds later, we see Consort Condensed again; it seems they just can’t get enough of it. This typeface is the film’s biggest, most outrageous anachronism, however we shall continue our dissection just for the fun of it.

Fig 9. More Youth Recreation Programs

This flyer seems innocent enough. Sure they’ve gone the artificially condensing route again, but that’s just their way, and at least it’s 1957 Helvetica. Alas no, on closer inspection that turns out that on top of the condensing, the family is actually Helvetica Neue.

Fig 10. Helvetica / Neue comparison

The biggest giveaway to this is the crossbar of the capital A. I should note that even if the designers used the condensed weight of Helvetica Neue, they still needed to take it that extra bit further manually to achieve that result.

Fig 11. Revise The Police Budget

Now here, it was difficult conclude whether this flyer uses Helvetica or Helvetica Neue, and this is largely because of the processing done to the type. I suggest that it is Neue though, due to the bar of the Ts being ever so slightly longer than those of 1957 Helvetica. Not only this, but when overlaying both versions, Neue just seems to be the better fit.

Fig 12. Another Helvetica / Neue comparison

Fig 13. Stop Wasting Our Tax Money

Moving on, our next flyer starts well with Oswald Bruce Cooper’s 1921 typeface, Cooper Black, but unfortunately that’s where the good times end. The other typeface in use is ITC Stone Serif. It was designed by Sumner Stone in 1987, almost 15 years after it appeared in this piece of ephemera.

Fig 14. Affordable Housing

Above, we see another example of Helvetica Neue fitting slightly better than 1957 Helvetica, but perhaps we can let this one slide. I would really rather we didn't though, it does make things significantly less fun.

Fig 15. Harvey (sometimes) Supports Historical Accuracy

Surprisingly, this flyer seems to actually use 1957 Helvetica, and its legitimate condensed weight, so I thought that deserved a mention.

Fig 16. Harvey Milk vs. Time

Now although there are many different cuts of Garamond, the version used for this poster appears to be the Semibold weight of Adobe Garamond Premier. The Adobe part is a bit of a giveaway, but this version wasn’t even available until 1989.

Fig 17. Harvey Milk Supervisor/5

Oh dear, Lubalin Graph has returned. Fortunately, the year is now 1977, so it’s historically a-ok. That said, Tobias Frere-Jones would not approve.

Fig 18. Gay Freedom Day 1970

Now this one is slightly problematic. The Gay Freedom Day 1970 t-shirt uses the typeface Stop, a design that was released in 1971. Now at this point in the film, the year is 1978, so the typeface did exist then. However, I would assume that such a shirt would have been sold on the day of the event, which would mean that they couldn’t possibly have used Stop for the text. This one’s unsolvable I think, so maybe we can give them the benefit of the doubt.

Despite the examples I have shown here, there is a lot of type in the film that does conform to the laws of time; mind you, it’s mostly Helvetica and Futura, but that’s at least realistic, given the incredible popularity of both of those faces.

So, while the film does make some fairly horrible mistakes when it comes to type choice, I’m quite sure we'll be finding worse in reviews to come.

– Michael Rhodes

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The Brisbane Journal of Typography

Typographic Almanac #01 - Milk