

However the letter M gives the game away immediately, and at a closer look the J letter is not the same, either.
#Hal 9000 font movie
The font can at a quick glance seem like it is a version of Futura, which would have created a nice bridge between the end titles of the previous movie and the opening titles of the sequel. The Grotesque font doing what it does best. The font used is a common variation of Grotesque. Director Peter Hyams deviates from Accepted Wisdom™ and bravely does the unthinkable. Here our expectations are ruthlessly thwarted, and we are not even 5 minutes into the movie yet. One would expect the font to be one of either Microgramma or Eurostile in any of either's variations, since no other font says Science Fiction quite like the two.
#Hal 9000 font series
The synopsis is presented as a series of stills with very compressed text information. His artistic estate is now housed in the Klingspor Museum, Offenbach.Īt the very start of the movie we see a quick synopsis of the events - essentially the third act of the previous movie 2001: A Space Odyssey - that led up to the situation the movie starts from. Koch was one of the leading calligraphers of his time, who worked as a designer, typographer and type designer primarily from 1914 to 1934, mostly with the Klingspor foundry. However, Kabel is not a fraktur but a geometric sanserif started at the Bauhaus in 1926 the font was designed for Klingspor in 1927. Koch later reused many of the concepts of Kabel in other fonts, perhaps most notably in his Zeppelin font. Kabel was designed by German designer and deeply religious man Rudolf Koch, and even though the name suggests the font would have been designed for a cable car - 'Kabel' being German for 'cable' - the font is a sans serif based on both his own previous font Koch Antiqua, released in 1922, and the Erbar font also from 1922, created by none other than Jakob Erbar. If the zeroes in "2010" have been replaced with the letter "O" - as was done in the titles for 2001: A Space Odyssey - it can be very difficult to see whether the font is Kabel or Busorama. Many third party publications have opted to use Kabel instead of Busorama for reasons unknown. Howbeit the movie logo itself is made up of one single font: Busorama. The font used for the various publications is often not one specific font, but a mish-mash of two different ones. Sure, the Monolith may be the most recognizable item of the Odyssey Sequence, but the element which people first see is the logo.Ī lot of the official paraphernalia, such as books and programmes all carry the same logo.

Of all the visual elements of the movie the one with the most immediate impact is the 2010 logo. But how is the case with director Hyams, then? What were the typographical design choices in 2010?

His choices for 2001: A Space Odyssey include inserting one (1) title card with serifs, in order to immediately tell the viewers the event happened a long, long time ago. Stanley Kubrick's love for sans serifs is well known and thoroughly documented. Avec serif or sans the same, typography is more than merely shapes of letters. In no other genre than science fiction can this be any more true. With all cinematographic fare visual impact is key.
