Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) movie logo and opening credits
Contributed by Patrick Concannon on Apr 15th, 2022. Artwork published in
July 1991
.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRRlbK5w8AE&ab_channel=MovieclipsClassicTrailers. License: All Rights Reserved.
Opening titles are typeset in Earth paired with Folio. There is also a brief use of Eurostile for credits featuring an ampersand. The main title, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, is also typeset in Earth with a debossed steel effect. The infrared Terminator P.O.V. sequences feature type set in a somewhat crude redrawing (see Q and R) of what is probably meant to have been Bessellen, as used in the first Terminator film from 1984, with additional text typeset in Helvetica.
The graphic design of the main titles is credited to Paul Olsen, with supervision by Ernest Farino. The Terminator P.O.V., video and graphic displays were made at Video Image (Rhonda C. Gunner, Richard E. Hollander, Gregory L. McMurry, John C. Wash).
Pacific Western Productions and Lightstorm Entertainment / Tri-Star Pictures. License: All Rights Reserved.
Pacific Western Productions and Lightstorm Entertainment / Tri-Star Pictures. License: All Rights Reserved.
Pacific Western Productions and Lightstorm Entertainment / Tri-Star Pictures. License: All Rights Reserved.
Pacific Western Productions and Lightstorm Entertainment / Tri-Star Pictures. License: All Rights Reserved.
8 Comments on “Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) movie logo and opening credits”
I’ve been curious, was the font used on the poster custom made?
Quinn, good question. “Possibly” is the best answer I can give you. The typeface known as Earth is still a bit of an unkown in terms of its origins, designer and its other potential variants (see also, Earth Biform). It can be traced back to around 1974, as it can be seen in an ad in U&lc (Volume 1, Number 3). It was listed by both Lettergraphics and its subsidiary PhotoVision of California, Inc., and also by Castcraft under the name Eager.
There are possibly other weights or styles of Earth that are not known at this time. I know that there is at least a more solid variant that must have been available as it has been used in many places. The T2 poster might be showing off a condensed or regular variant. This was also used in trailers for the film (see above) but I’ve yet to see it used elsewhere. The credit block on the poster is very close to the Sol Light. I have long suspected that there may be some connection between Earth and Sol, listed by VGC in 1973, but have yet to see any evidence to corroborate this notion. They might just be very similar. It’s possible that a designer customized Sol to resemble Earth as this was also done with Eurostile for the credit block in Theatrical Trailer #2, seen below.
Also, Sol (aka Digital Sans) was used for the tagline on the Spanish version of the poster (see below, top). The credit block is kept mostly the same, but all Spanish portions appear to be using Eurostile. For the German version of the poster, Suisse Sans is used for both the tagline and credit block.
This thread was quite helpful! I just decided “Fine, I’ll do it myself” and cooked up my own personal digitization using these posters and other Earth specimens as reference. This is just the beginning however.
I’ve already done the title font, poster 2 fonts on it, the dvd menu font thats nearly done. But good information Patrick!
Quinn! Any way you might be willing to share your personal digitization?
Coming back to this thread because I was doing what I usually do on a day off – scrolling around Evan Collins’s aesthetic are.na pages – and found this. So I guess there’s an Earth LIGHT too??
Roland used Earth on its products during the early 80s, then around 1987 created its own custom font based on Earth, which is what you are seeing on those memory cards. It may have been due to the transition away from phototype to digital type, during which Earth may have been becoming harder to have typeset. Maybe Roland wanted to do all design work in-house. Maybe there was some other aesthetic consideration for the change. In any case, they created their own font. It has similar properties but its use appears to have been exclusive to Roland products. Shigehiro Yamada (Roland Corporation, Design Room) is credited as the original designer of this Earth-like Roland font. Maniackers Design then created a new two weight (Regular and Demi Bold) revision of it titled RBIO-09 in 2009.
A similar scenario occurred when Terminator 2: Judgment Day was given a Special Edition on LaserDisc in the early 90s. The producers of that disc also created an Earth-like font used for titles in some of the video special features. This font was then also used on the later DVD editions from around 2000/01. Similar to Roland, this was exclusive to T2 related products, also being used in three T2 novels by S. M. Stirling.