Star Wars Hungarian movie posters
Source: movieposters.ha.com Image: Heritage Auctions. License: All Rights Reserved.
Csillagok háborúja (Star Wars), 1979. The custom acute accents are simple squares. The secondary typeface is ITC Avant Garde Gothic. More info on StarWarsMoviePoster.com.
Tibor Helényi (1946–2014) was a Hungarian painter, graphic designer, and poster artist. Among his most famous works are the posters he created for the original Star Wars trilogy, commissioned by MOKÉP, Hungary’s state-owned film distributor. Today, the posters are sought-after collector’s items.
The typeface Helényi used for the titles is Langdon Biform. Characterized by triangular notches, the boxy design is by John Langdon (b. 1946). To most people, the graphic designer and retired typography professor is best known for his ambigrams, and especially those he made for Dan Brown’s 2000 novel, Angels & Demons.
Langdon Biform is an early work of his, drawn in 1971 when he was in his mid-twenties, years before embarking on a career as freelance logo designer, type specialist, and lettering artist. Langdon submitted the design to a competition organized by Californian phototype company Lettergraphics, who added it to their library of typefaces. It didn’t take long before it was copied by other type providers. I’m aware of at least six digitizations, under various names including Lampoon, Harpoon ART, and Dominion, none of which were authorized by its original designer.
In a 2014 interview, Helényi was asked about a debate among fans who wondered whether he’d even watched Star Wars before designing the poster. After all, his art includes creatures that don’t appear in the film. Helényi laughingly replied that he indeed had seen the film, and that he had a lot of fun with designing the poster. In addition to his impressions from the advance screening, he also worked from lobby cards.
You can learn more about Helényi and see more of his work at his official website (maintained by his daughter Flora) and also at Budapest Poster Gallery.
Source: movieposters.ha.com Image: Heritage Auctions. License: All Rights Reserved.
A Birodalom visszavág (The Empire Strikes Back), 1982. Subtitle and credits are added in Univers Bold. More info on StarWarsMoviePoster.com.
Source: movieposters.ha.com Image: Heritage Auctions. License: All Rights Reserved.
A Jedi visszatér (Return of the Jedi), 1984. The secondary typeface for this poster is Univers Extended. More info on StarWarsMoviePoster.com.
Source: www.liveauctioneers.com Image: Budapest Poster Gallery. License: All Rights Reserved.
The original painted art created for the posters was sold in Budapest Poster Gallery’s Tibor Helenyi Estate Auction in 2015, alongside many other items by the artist.
Stephen Coles. License: CC BY-NC-SA.
Glyph set for Langdon Biform with its fifteen alternates, as shown in the “Do a Comp” fan by Lettergraphics International Inc., 1968–1975
This post was originally published at Fonts In Use