A Bit About Barth

April 15, 2022| Remedy667
Barth - A Nostalgic 90's Font with a Horror Twist by Remedy667

Where did it come from?

In 2019 I made up my own drawing challenge to coincide with the other popular October drawing challenges on Instagram. I followed the prompt list for Inktober but made up film titles from the prompts, writing them out in different “fonts” that I could make. I started the project in August by tracing out, I want to say, 45 different alphabets. I would then trace over letters to create words, so I was still creating something new each day on that day.

Barth was one of those 45 alphabets.

Influence

When I look at it, I want to say that it actually takes a lot of influence from the Tales from the Darkside logo. The TV series, not the film. I didn’t make any notes when I created it, but you can see loose similarities. Especially in the title card, as opposed to the DVD which I assume is another designers interpretation.

Close up of the "Tales from the Darkside" box art from the DVD release and a screen shot from the original series.
Close up of the “Tales from the Darkside” box art from the DVD release and a screen shot from the original series.

Naming Issues

It also reminded me of something you would see on a poster from an old 70s slasher movie. Which is what influenced the original name, Don’t Look in the Freezer, from the prompt Freeze. Which I thought was a pretty cool name. The problem was the length, 25 characters (including ‘space’), was 5 characters longer than what you’re allowed to use when naming a font.

Original sketches and post, Don't Look in the Freezer.
Original sketches and post, Don’t Look in the Freezer.

So, I named the typeface in memory of one of my favorite Les Lye characters from You Can’t Do That On Television, a Nickelodeon series that I enjoyed as a child. The shape of the letters also reminded me a bit of the chunky green slime they used to dump on people whenever they said “I Don’t Know.”

Categories: Font

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