[HN Gopher] Typography in Alien (2014)
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Typography in Alien (2014)
Author : tosh
Score : 238 points
Date : 2021-08-12 10:32 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (typesetinthefuture.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (typesetinthefuture.com)
| mwaitjmp wrote:
| Not sure what it is about this film, the aesthetics, story,
| atmosphere, the acting? I think it's perhaps my favourite film.
| The first 20 mins or so in particular are outstanding.
|
| I'm sure many know but the idea of having the mundane industrial
| theme transferred to space was supposed to have come from a
| student film called Dark Star[0].
|
| Alien Isolation is also fantastic though hard to fully enjoy the
| atmosphere for the most part as it's fairly terrifying.
|
| There was a piece on hacker news a while back where a programmer
| talked through how he was asked to code up the graphics for the
| landing sequence.(3D terrain wireframe).
|
| [0] https://lewtonbus.net/editorials/dark-star-chest-alien-
| burst...
| monkeycantype wrote:
| Something that I love about alien is the way John Hurt's
| character as the 'face into danger, get things done' soldier
| resolves the problem of horror movies - why do people do these
| stupid things that put them in danger? Hurt's character is
| smart and professional, and doing exactly what he has been
| trained to do, to put himself and his team into danger in
| service of a larger agenda. He's no an idiot, he doesn't waver
| near the danger, he charges straight into it. He's doing his
| job, as retconned in later movies the xenomoph is valuable
| asset, worthy of risking the nostromo and its crew for.
| ape4 wrote:
| I expect real mining spaceships and colonies will just have the
| same regular fonts we use now. They're the most readable. Not
| space/future fonts.
| _moof wrote:
| If SpaceX has anything to say about it, it'll be Lato.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Let's hope nothing safety-critical depends on being able to
| tell the difference between the l and the I.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| I expect they will be cost-effective conglomerates of many
| manufacturers, possibly refitted multiple times. They may
| likely be a pastiche of decades of decisions about fonts and
| styles!
| otikik wrote:
| The Corporation has decided that disembodied brains don't need
| fonts of any kind in order to perform their required function.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| I didn't notice a single stereotypical space/future font in
| there. Lots of Helvetica and suchlike, plus a few display
| typefaces in spots where it makes sense to use a display
| typeface. And, of course, a bunch of computer fonts that look
| retro-futuristic now, but would have just been all they had to
| work with, because that sort of styling was what you had to do
| to make text legible on a vintage 1979 low DPI CRT display.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Alien was made in the 70s and at the time and was set in some
| time in the distant future. What fonts were _we_ using back
| then? Will we be using the same fonts hundreds of years in the
| future? What fonts were the people in the setting using?
|
| On top of that, part of the draw of sci-fi is to imagine a new,
| different world. That includes different fonts.
| codazoda wrote:
| One thing that comes to mind is freeway sign fonts in the US.
| They have recently started to change and I certainly don't
| like the new ones as well as the old ones. But, maybe that's
| just my human emotions avoiding change.
| hyper_dynamics wrote:
| Yeah sure...
|
| "Can you make it look more futuristic? We're building a mining
| spaceship colony and it must attract the investors"
| sizzzzlerz wrote:
| Well, then, make sure it has an iPod interface and lots of
| cup holders.
| regularfry wrote:
| Interestingly, there's a font designed (relatively recently)
| for air traffic control use, where misreading glyphs can be
| catastrophic. I tried it as a terminal font.
|
| It is awful.
| _moof wrote:
| > I tried it as a terminal font. It is awful.
|
| In fairness, a shell is a very different use case from a
| flight deck. (You note below that this is a flight deck font,
| not an ATC font.) An aircraft cockpit is mostly using type to
| display small pieces of isolated information, e.g. a speed or
| a list of 4-6 letter approach names, not a big wall of text
| (ACARS messages notwithstanding).
| regularfry wrote:
| Yes, but I had initially thought that the selection
| pressures would be similar enough, particularly around
| disambiguation, that good for one would be good for the
| other. Either that was untrue, or... they didn't do the
| design particularly well.
| _moof wrote:
| Yup, entirely possible. I haven't used it myself.
| blue1 wrote:
| Can you remember the name of this font?
| regularfry wrote:
| I had misremembered. It's not for air traffic control, but
| for aircraft cockpits. It's this: https://b612-font.com/
|
| In particular I suspect that the '()' and '[]' glyphs are
| far more common in source code and terminal use than in
| cockpits. I found them far, far too similar. Also there's
| little distinction between 'O' and '0' , and between 'I'
| and '|'. Other than those problems, it's mostly fine - 'l'
| and '1' are usefully distinct, for instance - but the
| friction from those particular difficulties was enough to
| make me hate it.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Trivia: B-612 is the name of the asteroid home of the
| Little Prince of the eponymous story. That name is
| derived from the name of the aircraft flown by author
| Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Saint-Exupery was a pilot.
| bryondowd wrote:
| Makes sense that a cockpit wouldn't need a clear
| distinction between brackets and parenthesis, or |. But I
| am surprised about the similarity of 0 and O. I recall
| when I went to the ATC academy they really drilled in
| using a horizontal slash through zeros when hand-written.
| Also had to underline the letter S in any case where it
| could be ambiguous with the number 5 (as in a plane's
| tail number). I think we also had to put a horizontal
| strike through the letter Z to distinguish it from a 2.
| _moof wrote:
| Probably more important in an ATC context than a flight
| deck setting. Tail numbers come to mind, as you said.
| Although I could see Part 91 operators mixing up airport
| identifiers with O and 0, airlines don't fly to airports
| where that matters... intersections and navaids are all
| alpha... approach names aren't going to have any
| ambiguity... so I _guess_ one could argue it 's ok?
| Still, you're right, it was a weird choice not to
| disambiguate them.
|
| (Also, I'm super jealous you went to the ATC academy. By
| the time I seriously considered it, I'd aged out.)
| ourmandave wrote:
| Reading that reminded me of the ending, with the slow pan on a
| now sleeping Ripley.
|
| And the music (Sinfonia No 2 The Romantic) takes one last moment
| to jump scare you with the horn (2:31 in this video).
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfyg_sE85kQ
| msla wrote:
| Am I the only one who finds this website hard to read?
|
| Low contrast, huge margins, just not legible.
| coldacid wrote:
| I actually bought the book some time ago, based off the strength
| of this article and the one on 2001.
| jdc wrote:
| Man, what I wouldn't give to have Berthold City Light as my
| virtual console font!
| cratermoon wrote:
| No way. The 0 and the O are essentially identical (with O being
| slightly larger but only distinguishable next to the 0), and
| the l, 1, and I are close enough to be easily confused.
| bartvk wrote:
| Is there someone who can point to a mono version of this font?
| I tried it in iTerm but forcing a proportional font into mono
| looks pretty bad.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Oldie but goodie. My favourite bit is this:
|
| "The five minutes to destruction are _typographically
| uninteresting_. Ripley makes it to the escape shuttle with no
| sign of the alien. "
| specproc wrote:
| An oldie but a goodie. Love this piece.
| causi wrote:
| _That's not just a factor of ten out - it's also an entirely
| different unit of measurement._
|
| This is not a problem for multiple reasons. Firstly, if you work
| in a mechanical field you know that machines regularly combine
| metric and imperial parts. You may have to use a 3mm hex wrench
| and then sixty seconds later a 3/32 hex wrench. Right now you're
| using an OS that labels storage in one unit and storage devices
| labeled in another, gigabytes and gibibytes.
|
| The second reason is even simpler: the display on the Nostromo's
| computer is in-universe and the title card for the movie isn't.
| The title card could label the cargo of the Nostromo as 11.7
| trillion pennyweights of ore and it wouldn't matter.
|
| Also I don't know why he thinks "old man" as slang for father is
| British. It was in common use in the US in the 90s.
| hef19898 wrote:
| The only case I know of is old British cars, from before they
| fully transitioned to metric. Some parts on Land Rovers, prop
| shafts for example didn't for a _long_ time.
|
| Anyway, mixing is just bad engineering. Which shows us that bad
| engineering is a thing for space craft of the future. Just why
| Weyland-Yutani's logisticians would cope with this mix of units
| for refinement capacity and / or payload is beyond me...
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| The gearbox casing on my 1965 Volvo Amazon was secured with
| Whitworth bolts! I've forgotten what size. In 1980 it was
| difficult to find the right ones.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The bolts on the handlebar stem of one of my bikes (a Surly
| Straggler) have metric threads and _SAE hex heads_. Can it
| get more insane?
| oriolid wrote:
| There are several threads on bicycles that have metric
| diameter and TPI thread pitch. Off the top of my head, at
| least Italian bottom bracket and freewheel threads and
| French lock ring thread are like that but I'm sure there
| are more.
| causi wrote:
| _The only case I know of is old British cars_
|
| It's fairly common in the US for machines which aren't
| produced in large numbers. Specialized factory and scientific
| machinery especially. I encounter it with agricultural
| machinery and textile analyzers.
|
| _Just why Weyland-Yutani 's logisticians would cope with
| this mix of units for refinement capacity and / or payload is
| beyond me..._
|
| ...they don't. The title card is not in-universe. To the best
| of my knowledge there is no depiction of Weyland-Yutani
| themselves using imperial units.
| dharmab wrote:
| Old Harley Davidson motorcycles used only SAE parts. Newer
| ones have global suppliers and have a mix of metric and SAE.
| spfzero wrote:
| It was common in the US in the 70s too.
| riffraff wrote:
| The whole blog (and book, I suppose) is worth a read, it's just
| beautiful and funny.
|
| Also, you will not be able to avoid recognizing eurostile in
| every single evil future corp once you're done.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| > Furthermore, this screenshot shows that the Nostromo has a
| refinement capacity of "200,000,000 tonnes", and not the
| "20,000,000 tons" mentioned in the Foreshadowing Inventory.
| That's not just a factor of ten out - it's also an entirely
| different unit of measurement.
|
| "Haha. Boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder."
| [deleted]
| spfzero wrote:
| One is the capacity, the other is the load they actually were
| carrying?
| jayd16 wrote:
| I wonder if its plot relevant. Its an empty tanker ship. You'd
| risk that over a full one.
|
| This was also the last leg of the contract for the crew. Does
| that mean that Wayland-Yutani is actually exporting more
| minerals from Earth than importing?
| hef19898 wrote:
| Good catch! And a very nice fun fact. If so, or if that run
| was a bust, I wonder why WY was pissed at Ripley for blowing
| it up. Insurance money is good.
| codazoda wrote:
| Ahem, Waylan Yutani. :P
| smcl wrote:
| You're actually both mistaken. It was referred to both as
| Weyland-Yutani and Weylan-Yutani (note: wEy not wAy). It's
| an easy mistake to make :)
| cratermoon wrote:
| This article repeats the story about the loss of the Mars Climate
| Orbiter because of a mix-up in units. That's not really the
| story. The navigation team had figured out the problem well in
| advance, and requested an additional course correction maneuver
| that would have put the spacecraft back where it should have
| been. Their concerns were either ignored or overruled by
| management. https://spectrum.ieee.org/why-the-mars-probe-went-
| off-course
|
| See also "A critical flaw was a _program management_ grown too
| confident and too careless, even to the point of missing
| opportunities to avoid the disaster. "
| https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/809121
| outworlder wrote:
| From the article you linked:
|
| > But managers demanded that worriers and doubters "prove
| something was wrong,"
|
| I have no productive words to convey my astonishment.
| tantalor wrote:
| Sure, wait for the thing to crater. There is your proof.
| BonitaPersona wrote:
| I didn't know about this website and book, so I'm glad you
| decided to share it today even if it has a few years.
|
| Definitely recommend the whole blog, and not only this article.
|
| Thank you!
| murat124 wrote:
| I'm fascinated by the work that was put into making this
| legendary movie. Is there a specific genre name given to movies
| that have only a few people throughout the entirety of the movie
| in a closed environment? If there was, Alien would definitely top
| the list.
| barrkel wrote:
| It's very common in plays with small casts converted into
| movies, for obvious reasons.
| tillinghast wrote:
| This led me to the following tangent: framing 12 Angry Men as
| an MITH is an interesting thought experiment.
| brnt wrote:
| Its why I like Oz (series) too. There is something to be said
| for understanding the boundary conditions in full. Funny thing
| is that my partner hates this kind of thing :/
| psuter wrote:
| "huis clos"? It's commonly used in French at least.
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/huis_clos
| pklausler wrote:
| The late Blake Snyder wrote a couple of books ("Save The Cat!",
| recommended) on screenwriting with the hypothesis that there
| are only ten basic story paradigms, and _Alien_ is the classic
| "Monster In The House" example, along with _Jaws_.
|
| In short, a MITH movie has our heroes trapped in a space due to
| a sin not of their making, there's a monster, and at least one
| character who is a wounded half-man harbinger of doom.
|
| Once you know the ten categories, movies become pretty
| predictable after the first reel or so, so maybe you don't want
| to learn them.
| stnmtn wrote:
| Predictable movies are always predictable, but knowing the
| categories and Save the Cat structure is fun because then you
| can see when truly talented people subvert it and twist those
| "rules".
| pklausler wrote:
| The tenfold categories are also a way to rescue a bad
| movie-watching experience, because you can at least debate
| whether (say) _Ad Astra_ was a ROP or something else
| instead of just bitching about the science violations.
| codazoda wrote:
| It's not _Alien_ but I think it fits in the (unknown) category
| really well... Buried, with Ryan Reynolds. It 's a pretty good
| flick that's filmed almost entirely in a small dark box with
| only him in it.
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| And perhaps one of the only movies without the standard Ryan
| Reynolds quips and sarcasm! (I just watched The Hitman's
| Wife's Bodyguard and was a little put off by just how often
| he still does this, knowing that he has acting chops that
| don't necessitate it)
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Is there a specific genre name given to movies that have only
| a few people throughout the entirety of the movie in a closed
| environment?
|
| I seem to recall ebcountering one that is somewhat more
| specific than TV Tropes' "Closed Circle" [0] but less specific
| than "Ten Little Murder Victims" [1] that fits this, but can't
| put my finger on it right now.
|
| [0] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ClosedCircle
|
| [1]
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TenLittleMurderV...
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Is there a specific genre name given to movies that have
| only a few people throughout the entirety of the movie in a
| closed environment?_
|
| In TV this form is often referred to as a "bottle episode"[1],
| and there's at least one article describing Alien as a "bottle
| movie"[2]. Presumably, this was done to maximize what could be
| done with its $11M (!) budget.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottle_episode
|
| [2] https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/ent/alien-disney.html
| ben7799 wrote:
| Michael Crichton loved writing books on this trope.
|
| e.x.
|
| Jurassic Park - Stuck on an island full of dinosaurs
|
| Congo - Stuck in a lost city full of deadly intelligent apes
|
| Sphere - Stuck in an alien ship on the bottom of the ocean
| daveslash wrote:
| Westworld, stuck in a theme park with a killer robot _(the
| 1973 movie, I haven 't seen the new show)_
| folli wrote:
| First season is worth a watch IMO. It handles topics
| addressed by the movie in greater depth (sentient robots, a
| bit like the story of Pinocchio).
|
| The other seasons are made confusing seemingly on purpose
| without adding to the story.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Andromeda Strain - stuck in a high-security bio-research
| facility with a deadly alien pathogen.
| ben7799 wrote:
| I struggled with whether or not to include that one..
| haven't actually read it and wasn't sure.
|
| The whole genre is "Lost World" and goes all the way back
| to King Solomon's Mines in the 1800s.
| cratermoon wrote:
| In Andromeda Strain, there's a bit of a twist in that as
| the situation with the pathogen in the lab deteriorates,
| the automatic safety systems start locking it down even
| more tightly. The lab is made up of multiple levels, with
| the lowest level (underground) being the most controlled.
| For plot reasons, one of the researchers has to try to
| get from the lowest level to an upper one and the
| security systems actively try to stop him.
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| This article inspired a keycap set for mechanical keyboards, G20
| Semiotic, back in 2016:
| https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=85525.0
|
| It's one of my favorite sets. Unfortunately, it isn't available
| to purchase anymore. Signature Plastics said it would be coming
| back, but that was before the pandemic, and nothing's been said
| about it since.
| stuart78 wrote:
| Love it, i'd be hitting that w two or three times a day.
| gedy wrote:
| I have this set, and added it to an old Motorola terminal for
| patrol cars: https://postimg.cc/N5GLsQ9X
| OoOOo wrote:
| That's a thing of beauty!
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| Looks like a salvaged piece of equipment from the Nostromo.
| akkartik wrote:
| Previous thread from 2016:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11977909
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Although the "Moon"'s font is less boring, it almost shouts
| "don't read me" when more than a couple of words are displayed
| with it. And it also seems grotesquely unrealistic - nobody would
| use such a font to display anything useful in real life, even in
| future.
| sidpatil wrote:
| That's the OCR-A font. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCR-A).
| As you can guess from the name, it was designed for readability
| by both humans and computers.
|
| These days it looks like that font is more popular for graphic
| design than it is for actual OCR applications.
| jhbadger wrote:
| See also that weird font still used on many US paper checks
| (E-13B). Half the movies in the 1970s used that as the
| default computer/future font.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_ink_character_recogni.
| ..
| atombender wrote:
| The sci-fi font that showed up in the 60s was not MICR, but
| a bunch of typefaces inspired by it. Chief among these was
| Westminster [1] and Data 70. They were inspired by MICR,
| but the latter only has digits and a few control
| characters.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_(typeface)
| crispyambulance wrote:
| OK, but it's not about legibility here.
|
| It's about creating a feeling. Fonts like other graphic
| elements CAN communicate feeling in addition to whatever they
| spell out.
|
| The case of Moon and Alien, it communicates a non-empathic
| "Company" that has a lot to hide. A company that is literally
| cryptic to it's own employees, of course they're going to have
| unreadable user-hostile fonts.
|
| A real-life analogy might be something like UI's from Oracle
| EBS (enterprise business suite): Horrific, outdated, grey-blah
| swing interfaces from the 90's that have tentacles in every
| aspect of employee work-life from vacation-requests to
| procurement, to bonuses and customer relationships.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| By the way I always loved Swing interfaces and always felt
| like they are incredibly cozy, emotionally warm and also tidy
| at the same time.
|
| Here[1] is a picture of Oracle EBS. To me it seems beautiful
| (literally).
|
| And if I look at the more classic Swing style here[2] I
| almost feel urge to run around naked and scream about how
| damn beautiful it is. I certainly want every app I use and
| the OS itself to be entirely in this design and I would even
| pay just for that (because I feel like that would boost my
| psychological well-being and productivity).
|
| So, given our perception of this same UI is on the opposite
| extremes I conclude this is _highly_ subjective.
|
| [1] https://cdn.app.compendium.com/uploads/user/e7c690e8-6ff9
| -10...
|
| [2] https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E37069_01/html/E37073/figures/
| ide...
| jhbadger wrote:
| While I don't share your enthusiasm for Swing, I understand
| it in principle because I really love the NextStep UI with
| its 3D effects and yet I've met people who think it is
| ugly.
| crispyambulance wrote:
| Understood... yes, it's all subjective, even if that
| screenshot makes me vomit a little!
|
| FWIW, you aren't showing that text often overflows it's
| textbox and you can't actually see what's in it without
| putting your cursor in and moving it to the end of the
| text. They didn't have the concept of expanding to fit
| content back then? or maybe most corporations can't afford
| the oracle consultant that will do it for them ! :-) It's
| OK though, most of the time you can just export to excel
| with a few clicks.
|
| Of course, such applications require lots of tuning, and
| though they might have been cozy 20 years ago, they seem
| harsh and burdensome today because no one bothers to change
| stuff any more. You're just supposed to conform to it.
| lazide wrote:
| You can totally expand to resize based on content, among
| many other tricks. That would require someone to care to
| do so, which is probably the bigger problem.
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(page generated 2021-08-12 23:00 UTC)