Sleeping Beauty Castle Storybook
From its logo to park signage and decoration, Disneyland is strongly associated with various styles of fraktur, particularly simplified and romanized versions of the style that are more palatable to those unfamiliar with traditional blackletter. Bradley is one of the typefaces used frequently throughout the park, especially in Fantasyland. It plays a starring role in Disneyland’s castle centerpiece, wherein the story of Sleeping Beauty is told through several dioramas, along with book displays. The walk-thru was originally designed in the style of Eyvind Earle, production designer for Disney’s 1959 film Sleeping Beauty, including books with hand calligraphy. After various changes to the castle interior over the years, Earle-style dioramas returned in 2008. I assume that’s when these new books appeared, typeset primarily in Bradley.
The central character’s name, Aurora, is set in an outlined version of the typeface (which was one of the styles released early on in 1897) and given a color gradient treatment. The “Sleeping Beauty” title and illuminated initials use Italian Black and hand lettering or other typefaces.
There are many half-hearted revivals of Bradley, and it’s not clear which one (if not their own proprietary version) Disney uses. Among many other differences, the original metal typeface featured caps that dipped below the baseline to feel vertically centered with the lowercase (in all but the smallest sizes: 6 and 8 point). Disney’s font does not have this distinction, instead sporting a common baseline, like all the amateur digitizations do. Fortunately, there is now a proper revival of the typeface designed by David Jonathan Ross: Bradley DJR.
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5 Comments on “Sleeping Beauty Castle Storybook”
In another entry I’ll share examples of other attractions in Fantasyland, but here’s Bradley appearing again on a sign just outside Pinocchio’s Daring Journey.
Bradley doesn’t always do well in all caps, but it’s tolerable in this instance.
This post focuses on Bradley. For those who wonder about the other fonts used for the Sleeping Beauty Castle: The book’s title (shown in the first two images) and some of the initials are in Italian Black Ornamented a.k.a. Pamela. The Corridor of Goons (not pictured here) uses Duc de Berry. I couldn’t find a match for the font used in the logo on the main sign (also shown in the last picture) – some of its letterforms are similar to Manuskript-Gotisch.
Thanks, Florian! Added Italian Black Ornamented to the main text.
Bradley (as well as Pamela) and Disney go back a long way: a sign for King Stefan’s Banquet Hall in the then newly opened Cinderella Castle at Disney World is shown in Disney News Magazine Summer 1972:
That issue also has an article about the sign painters working at Disneyland and Walt Disney World.
A couple of years ago someone asked me to print a specimen of wood type letters he had purchased in Germany. It turned out to be a set of lower case Bradley letters, with some German accents thrown in. I didn’t recognize it right away, but I asked Dan Reynolds in Berlin and he explained that Bradley, which was an American derivation of fraktur letterforms, was quickly copied by multiple German foundries that released their own versions, including in wood type. Weird how German letterforms travelled back and forth across the Atlantic.
Now I have just rescued a case of 12 and 24 point Bradley that looks to be original US foundry type from 100+ years ago based on the dark color and markings on the type. I have donated it to the collection at the San Jose Printers’ Guild Shop, where it can be used for printing earlier-era event ephemera.