Finding the right typeface for a title is never as easy as it at first seems. There’s often a temptation to choose a font that calls too much attention to itself. Instead the titling should be both easy to read and pretty much “invisible” as far as style — while (somewhat paradoxically) conveying some “flavor” as to what the book is about.

Checking some of the typefaces used for recent popular films can be instructive.

Interestingly type on titling can also be modified ever so slightly to achieve the emotional impact needed for a story. The altered “spike” on the lower-case “p” of Eclipse is a nice demonstration of how just a small change delivers a big impact.

Dinging up and “grunging” type is a quick way to alter its personality for a title. Nightmare on Elm Street opted to use the tried and sometimes true Trajan, using some very subtle grunge for a subtle alteration that works. Ditto for The Karate Kid where ho-hum Helvetica Compressed is transformed to look as if it has been ink-stamped onto the poster. And Knight and Day did much the same thing with the venerable Akzidenz-Grotesk.

A book cover design could do worse than use one of these typeface/alterations.
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While occasionally designing movie posters, Duncan Long mostly works as a freelance book cover illustrator for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. See his cover illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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