Trajan: why so many movie posters use it
Roman inscription capitals, and the movie poster font.
Trajan
ABCDEFGHIJKLM NOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklm nopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789
- 48Quartz
- 32Judge my vow
- 24Sphinx of black quartz
- 18Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow
- 14Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow
Preview uses Cinzel, the closest free match.
In use, with Lato
Edit the words to try your own. The pairing tool has more body fonts.
Some roads only go one way.
The Long Way Home
Two brothers, one borrowed car and a thousand miles of coast between them and the funeral. In cinemas this spring.
History
- Carol Twombly designed Trajan for Adobe in 1989.[1]
- It is based on the Roman square capitals carved at the base of Trajan's Column in Rome.[1]
- It has capitals only, because the Romans did not use lowercase letters on monumental inscriptions. Trajan Pro put small caps in the lowercase slots.[1]
- It shipped with early releases of Photoshop, which made it an everyday tool for 1990s poster designers.[2]
- Its overuse earned it the name "the Arial of movie posters".[2]
Who uses it
- Posters for The Bodyguard, Scent of a Woman and At Play in the Fields of the Lord[2]
- The Bones and All (2022) logo, based on Trajan with added weight[3]
- Many film posters, TV shows and book covers[1]
Sources
- 1. Wikipedia: Trajan (typeface)
- 2. The A.V. Club: how a single font came to dominate movie posters
- 3. Fonts In Use: Bones and All movie poster and credits
The free alternative
Cinzel has the same Roman capital proportions and flared, chiselled serifs. Like Trajan it works best in capitals.
Body fonts that go with Cinzel:
- LatoOpen, even sans shapes keep long text calm under ornate capitals.
- EB GaramondA classical serif with the same Roman roots, quiet enough at text size not to compete.
- Source Sans 3Narrow and plain, so the wide inscriptional caps carry all the character.
- LoraSoft, brushy serifs give warmth that the formal caps lack.
Other fonts
- HelveticaThe Swiss sans that ended up on subway signs and airline logos.
- ArialDrawn to the same widths as Helvetica, shipped with Windows.
- FuturaThe 1927 geometric sans of circles and straight lines.
- GothamWide geometric capitals taken from New York building signs.
- ImpactA 1965 Sheffield display face that became the meme font.
- GaramondSixteenth century Paris type, revived many times since.
- Times New RomanMade for a London newspaper in 1932, then shipped with Windows.
- DidotHigh contrast French type, and the look of fashion magazines.
- BaskervilleA Birmingham printer’s sharper, lighter serif from the 1750s.
- Comic SansDrawn in 1994 for the speech bubbles in Microsoft Bob.
- CourierAn IBM typewriter face that screenplays never gave up.
- RobotoGoogle's Android system font since 2011.