"Movie Poster Font" Copyright?

[Justin Anderson]

I'm designing a website for commercial use and I'm considering using the Movie Poster font for all of the buttons. Does anyone know if there's a copyright on that? How would I find out?


thanks,
-J

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Where is the font from? That makes a lot of difference. Linotype has no "Movie Poster" font in their library, Adobe does I think... But their site is down right now for a scheduled maintenance deal. You could always go over to the typophile.com forums and see what people have to say there.

In general, if you or your client buys the font from one of the bigger type libraries, then you're usually OK to use it. However, some fonts do have additional provisions, some even carry royalty restrictions so be sure to read up on what you're doing. When you're talking about a "Move Poster" font, I'm assuming you mean the thin sans-serif lettering used these days for all the names and other info usually found at the bottom. If that's the case, there's a few different sources for this font out there and all are essentially the same, but vary in price (I even think there is a free one or two) and license conditions.

You might also be able to get away with some of the common free ones included with many PC/Mac systems these days. Just stretch them vertically a bit... News Gothic, Century Gothic, Eurostile and the like come to mind for this.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

There's this one (http://www.dafont.com/sf-movie-poster.font) that appears to be free...

[Justin Anderson]

There's this one (http://www.dafont.com/sf-movie-poster.font) that appears to be free...

sweet. I'll check. Thanks. :mellow:

[Zak Forsman]

a friend of mine designs major studio theatrical release posters for a living. according to her, there is no real standard, but Univers 39 Thin Ultra Condensed is the most common. and it's what i used in the mock-up poster for my upcoming feature, although mine differs in that i didn't use "small caps" for the attributes... $24 at fonts.com

http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/1290/heartposterrevhl4.jpg (http://www.sabipictures.com/heartofnow/)

[Manfred Lopez]

I always end up doing my own on Photoshop. I have far greater control that way. The first step is to build up a basic alphabet by stretching and molding a ready-made font. Then, you paste all letters right next to each other on 3 or 4 long strips. Last, you assemble each line of words for the poster (or your website) on new strips, while saving the original ones as a reference alphabet. The completed phrases in the new strips then get squashed together into a single layer and pasted wherever you want them. This actually resembles how type used to be put together in printing presses in the old days...

Oh yea, all this to save yourself the 24 bucks... (and any copyright provisions since you made it yourself).

[PaulClements]

I always end up doing my own on Photoshop. I have far greater control that way. The first step is to build up a basic alphabet by stretching and molding a ready-made font. Then, you paste all letters right next to each other on 3 or 4 long strips. Last, you assemble each line of words for the poster (or your website) on new strips, while saving the original ones as a reference alphabet. The completed phrases in the new strips then get squashed together into a single layer and pasted wherever you want them. This actually resembles how type used to be put together in printing presses in the old days...

Oh yea, all this to save yourself the 24 bucks... (and any copyright provisions since you made it yourself).

Only problem with that is if you should ever want to blow up a large poster of it the text will antialias badly. But if you know you are only ever doing it as a mockup for 72dpi for the web, or are prepared to redesign it later then it's an ok way to work.

There are actually hundreds of Fonts you can use to do this. Some designed specifically and others that squash down. You'd be better of using the ones designed specifically as squashing a font can cause jagged edges at low resolution on screen sometimes (Anyone who's tried squashing Machine, which is the red logo font, to 30% height at a small size ought to recognise this problem).

Zak's Univers shout is a very good one and I haven't got time to look for others at the moment but if I remember I will chuck a few more in.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Only problem with that is if you should ever want to blow up a large poster of it the text will antialias badly. But if you know you are only ever doing it as a mockup for 72dpi for the web, or are prepared to redesign it later then it's an ok way to work.

Just do the initial design at large format 3'x4' poster size and 600dpi to start with. ;)

Even with changing fonts, as long as you keep the original vecor forms reflecting all the transformations and don't rasterize you're fine. You'll have far more trouble scaling up the raster artwork used in a poster than the type.

[Manfred Lopez]

Yes, the text in photoshop doesn't get "digitized" until you flatten the layers, so your movie text will scale to any resolution. Also, I alwas start my posters at maximum size (huge file), and when their done, then I scale them down to all the sizes that I need. Otherwise it just doesn't feel like a real poster if it is not a huge file with huge hi-rez pictures.

[Martin Drew]

Easier done in Illustrator, much greater control of vectors there.

M

[PaulClements]

Yeah sorry my bad, I'm still not into using vectors so much in Photoshop (Although I really ought to be) - thinking old school there for a moment! Like Martin I use Illustrator or Indesign/Quark when producing printed media.

[Martin Drew]

It is great being able to work with vectors in Photoshop but not what it is best at, If I am working in Photoshop with vectors I usually end up swapping out to Illustrator for the intensive stuff... it is just so much easier.

M

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I'll do more complex vector work in Illustrator too... But if there's raster imagery involved, everything still ends up back in Photoshop. And even though PS doesn't give you all of Illustrator's vector tools, it imports all the vector paths just fine and leaves them to be rastered when your ready. I understand that Adobe is trying to perpetuate two separate products, but I wish they would just merge the two already.

[Ralph Oshiro]

Univers 39 Thin Ultra Condensed is the most common. and it's what i used in the mock-up poster for my upcoming feature . . .Hmm . . . that's good to know. I checked, and it seems to be a Linotype license. It's great to know the exact Univers typeface most often used, since there are so many similar-looking san serif typefaces out there. As many of you may already know, it's not really the best design practice to simply re-scale any given typeface in a vector program. Typefaces are specifically designed to be proportionally balanced, and aesthetically designed, for the specific dimensions for which that particular typeface was originally designed. Knowing that, "Univers 39 Thin Ultra Condensed," is the "real" condensed Univers typeface most often used in movie posters is something I've ALWAYS wanted to know! Thanks, Zak! Great find on the "free" Univers condensed clone, there too, AV!

[Martin Drew]

Strictly speaking you are right Ralph, fonts need to be designed for use at a specific size and if we are getting real purist, for a specific media too. However modern digital fonts are designed assuming they will be used from small text all the way up to display. There are some specialist titling versions of certain popular fonts but these are few and far between.

The newer font technologies allow for multiple versions of fonts that can be switched dependent upon the size being used. I remember a lot of talk about this when Multiple Master fonts first came out, Open Type allows it too but I don't think this feature is usually implimented, I presume there is just not enough demand to warrant the huge amount of effort to create such fonts. Anyway the most popular font format for print is still Postscript type 1 which is "one size fits all". Now back in the days of proper typesetters it was a very different world, hot metal and film... all gone now though.

Non-proportional scaling is a different matter of course... Now that verges upon evil...

M

[Martin Drew]

I understand that Adobe is trying to perpetuate two separate products, but I wish they would just merge the two already.

Wouldn't it be great if you could just open up the illustrator application as a layer (or multiple layers) in Photoshop. In fact if each app was just a module for some kind of master holding app.....

M

[Manfred Lopez]

Wouldn't it be great if you could just open up the illustrator application as a layer (or multiple layers) in Photoshop. In fact if each app was just a module for some kind of master holding app.....

M

I think Adobe is still at the stage of trying to get all their apps to the same computer (video production suite comming soon to mac... again).

[Jared VanLeuven]

Wouldn't it be great if you could just open up the illustrator application as a layer (or multiple layers) in Photoshop. In fact if each app was just a module for some kind of master holding app.....

M

That'd be very very sweet.

[Ralph Oshiro]

I remember a lot of talk about this when Multiple Master fonts first came out, Open Type allows it too but I don't think this feature is usually implimented, I presume there is just not enough demand to warrant the huge amount of effort to create such fonts.Yes, I remember Adobe's launch of MM fonts. Apparently, MM fonts seem to have gone by the wayside. What applications support OpenType? What is the most popular [Windows] font design tool in use today?

[Martin Drew]

There is a small list of apps that support OpenType here: http://www.itcfonts.com/Support/OT_SysSupport.htm (http://www.itcfonts.com/Support/OT_SysSupport.htm) After Effects does too.

M

[robbo]

Wouldn't it be great if you could just open up the illustrator application as a layer (or multiple layers) in Photoshop. In fact if each app was just a module for some kind of master holding app.....

M

You guys know that you can drag and drop your bits and pieces between the two apps ?
It's worked like that for yonks - not trying to be smartass, just saying.
So it works together like a sort of master app, already.

InDesign, too IIRC. But they don't let drag out of InDesign, only drop into.
May have changed recently. I haven't used InDesign for years.

Between PS and AI you can d&d back and forth, all day long.
Just remember to hit enter or return after you've dropped ....

[Martin Drew]

I was envisaging a smarter-assier interface than that, so that all work is layered in positition. I tend to cut and paste between apps rather than drag and drop.. just a habit thing.

M

[robbo]

heh - yeah it is sort of clumsy having to resize the app windows so that you can d&d between them ...

hey - I'm all for the smarter-assier interface !
It would be good, no doubt.