Barbarella movie posters
US teaser poster (40″×60″)
In her recent contribution, Hee showed that Barbarella was presented to cinema-goers in the United Kingdom in Edelgotisch. In the United States and also in several European countries, the typeface associated with the 1968 science fiction movie is Peignot.
Various posters feature its Bold weight, with tight letterspacing and often with contoured letterforms. On the US One Sheet poster shown directly below, Cassandre’s 1937 design can be see with alternating glyph colors and a shower of stars. The initial B and the double l were lowered so that they sit flush with the other letters (except for the b), further increasing the whimsical appeal of Peignot. In Ugo Tognazzi’s name, the G had to lose its descender, for a vertically more compact line.
The art on that poster (and the international variants shown further below) is by Robert McGinnis, who turned 98 last week.
![US One Sheet (27″×41″). The tagline at the top left uses Italic. “See [Barbarella] do her thing!” is added in what looks like . The names of John Phillip Law and Marcel Marceau are set in , and the music credits in the box might be ..](https://fiu-original.b-cdn.net/fontsinuse.com/use-images/N215/215619/215619.jpeg?filename=19019024%5D&call=url%5Bfile:product.chain%5D)
US One Sheet (27″×41″). The tagline at the top left uses Helvetica Italic. “See [Barbarella] do her thing!” is added in what looks like Standard Condensed. The names of John Phillip Law and Marcel Marceau are set in Galaxy, and the music credits in the box might be Lightline Gothic..
24 Sheet poster (104″×232″)
US Half Sheet (22″×28″)
Belgian poster (14″×21″)
German A0 poster (33″×46″). Some smaller text is set in Folio. The narrow gothic here is a different one, possibly News Gothic Extra Condensed.
4 Comments on “Barbarella movie posters”
I love the details about the alterations to the original typeface! This is kind of play is what I love about the onset of phototypesetting
Obviously, now we can do all of the same things (and then some) but there’s something that’s still fresh and exciting about how it was done back then, maybe actually because there were more limitations
Meanwhile, in Czechia…
This has sent me down a rabbithole concerning movie posters produced for different countries, by the way, and specifically Czech poster design of the 60's and 70's!
This is one focus among others in the Big Screen exhibition that’s on display in Berlin for one more week.
Ooh wow, thank you for the tip. Sounds right up my alley. I’m planning to visit Berlin soon and I so wish it could have been timed to see this! I can at least set about reading anything that’s available online about it
There’s also a catalog. I don’t know if it includes the feature about country-specific poster variants, but it sure is worth checking out.