Pop Front Pictures

Pop Front Pictures is an US-based company whose aim is to develop and produce motion pictures and television films. The name is an abbreviation of “Popular Front” which establishes a connection to the left-wing impetus of its three main protagonist, Nando Vila, Bhaskar Sunkara, and C.C. Kilpatrick.

The design of the website is coined by big illustrations with chalk effect that visually remind of early twentieth century graphic design and depict submarine scenes, including divers armed with a sword and a trident. Apart from small quantities of FF Good for the menu, the typeface that shapes the visuality is Stratos, available from Production Type and initially designed by Yoann Minet for an exhibition about the Soviet documentation of the Holocaust on film.

A main characteristic of this geometric sans is the difference between its condensed capitals compared to the wider and more constructivist lowercase letters. A feature hardly visible in this project but important to mention is that in Stratos, the width of a line will stay consistent between weight as different as light and black, a quality seldomly found.

The web design makes use of a number of styles of Stratos. The logotype is set from Stratos Bold Italic, intro and headlines use Stratos Bold Regular, whereas the reading text is set from Stratos Light. There are no indications of typographic conservatism, as upright all-caps typesetting is absent and all paragraphs are left-aligned.