Adventures in Font Matching: Joss Whedon’s Firefly

UPDATE: There have been a lot of great comments and requests made on this blog and in the comments of the post at WHEDONesque from which many people have learned about this piece. I recommend reading them as they bring up some other great fonts to track down and maybe someone out there can help us identify them.

Also, I have written a follow-up post. Once you’re done reading this, click here and read some more.

I have always enjoyed looking through font books. I get a special joy out of the fact that the fonts that make my favorite movies and TV shows and such are available for purchase and download (some just download as they are offered for free). I remember flipping through the old Letraset catalog back when type was still rubbed down and the feeling of “I know I’ve seen this before…but where?” that I’d get when I spied a font that had long been associated with a corporate logo or pop culture icon. I dig this stuff. I’m by no means an expert at it, but I really dig it, you know?

Anyway, a few weeks ago I was approached by the organizer of the local Serenity/Firefly Meetup Group and asked if I would assemble a website for them…or, well, us…as I am one of them. I agreed and the site is currently being readied; close to finished but not get announced or launched. In the process of getting together the Serenity/Firefly imagery, I also paid some attention to the fonts used ont the TV show and in the movie. (Update 12/12/06: unfortunately, things didn’t go well with the website. We couldn’t see eye to eye about how it should work and when I asked to be reimbursed for my expenses so that I could step down and allow someone else to take over, they decided it would be cheaper just to register another domain and leave me uncompensated…nice, huh?…anyway, on to the fonts.)

There have been several posts made to various Firefly fan sites asking what the font is that is used in the Firefly logo. Most times the answer comes up as Nuptial… which is close… but not so much. Truth is, it’s a logo and that’s it. I may have started its life as letters from Nuptial or even its more talented cousin Elegeion, but it has since moved on and become something quite other. It also bears some resemblance to Florens and Poetica Chancery but those too are not it. Nothing is or will be until some fontographer or budding amateur takes it upon themselves to fashion the 6 lowercase letters and that lone capital into a full fledged font.

The angle of attack I attempted in vain to find the logo font actually involved using another reference as evidence. The opening credits of the show depict scenes focusing on each of the programs principal actors. Their names are briefly displayed in script that bursts out in shafts of light before fading into a serif typeface that more clearly shows the actor’s name. It was that blurry, animated script that I set out to identify in the hopes that maybe the logo font would be in some way related to it. Well, no such luck. I did manage to identify it though; it is called Voluta Script.

Defeated by the logo font but encouraged at having found Voluta Script, I decided to continue. The serif face that I mentioned before–the one that the Voluta Script credits faded into–that font is Joanna. And, interesting to Firefly fans and type geeks such as myself, if you study the credits, some names are in Joanna Regular (Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk, Morena Baccarin, Jewel Staite, Sean Maher, and Summer Glau) while others are in Joanna Bold (Gina Torres, Adam Baldwin, and Ron Glass)… not sure why… but if it holds no secret meaning about the actors or characters, it means someone on the graphics team screwed up. Also, my homegirl Jewel Staite got short changed on name time on screen–the second you can fully read her name they cut to the engine spinning.

While I was at it, I identified the font used in the DVD menus. I had always thought it was Emigre’s Democratica, but it turns out it was in fact Alembic.

On to Serenity: It is widely held that the font used for the Serenity title treatment for the Firefly motion picture is Papyrus, again, like the Firefly logo font, it is very close to Papyrus…but not. Although in this case, I gotta concede, it’s close enough for the girls I go out with. It’s been tweaked a bit, but not enough to sweat over–heck, there isn’t even a consensus between the typeface used in the film and the typeface used on the marketing! I ended up using Papyrus for the website for all the headlines since it is a pretty common system font.

And one final bit of insight into my font loving dementia; while watching Serenity a certain font kept showing up here and there…on the sides of spaceships…on walls…on a new design of the Blue Sun logo…and I knew I had seen it somewhere before, but I just couldn’t place it. It was driving me nuts…”Fruity Oaty Bar” nuts in fact…and then I found it: Bionic Kid

Speaking of Fruity Oaty Bars, that and the font from the Operative’s computer screen are still under investigation.