Angelina Jolie movie poster for In the Land of Blood and Honey with Duncan Long's typeface

I received word this week that a typeface I’d designed (“Back In the USSR”) is being employed on the film poster (and possibly with the credits) for In the Land of Blood and Honey.

The movie marks the screen writing/directing debut of Angelina Jolie and has already won The Producers Guild of America’s 2012 Stanley Kramer Award and recently received a Golden Globe nomination. Set in the 1990s during the genocide and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Herzegovina, In the Land of Blood and Honey. is likely to be an eye-opener to many film goers. It’s a privilege to have played even a very tiny part in the marketing of the movie.

It was a bit of a surprise to learn my typeface was on the movie poster. I’d forgotten about giving permission to use the typeface to The Ant Farm (a Los Angeles design group). The designers were pretty tight-lipped about what project the typeface would be used with and I had assumed it was some small indie movie. So I’d pretty much forgotten all about it until I got a phone call Wednesday saying that the “check was in the mail” for the use of the font.

Then the bombshell: By the way, the typeface is on the movie poster for the new Angelina Jolie movie.

What?

I’ll admit it: My first thought was that someone was playing a joke on me. However after locating the movie poster online and seeing my typeface, the reality began to sink it.

Even more surprising was discovering my typeface (in red in the photo below) behind these two little-known actors. Again there was a certain feeling that perhaps this was some sort of hoax with my typeface added after the fact to the publicity shot.

Angelina Jolie in publicity poster -- note Duncan Long's typeface / font to the left of the two actors.

Publicity poster for In the Land of Blood and Honey showing Back In the USSR typeface (in red).

My “Back In the USSR” typeface continues to be available (free for personal use — commercial users must ask permission from me and pay a fee for the use of the font) at dafont.com.

I created the typeface a few years ago for Issue 4 of my Critica Grafica magazine. To ease my graphic design needs, I added a number of “extras” to the letter set including the faces of Lenin and Stalin, a hammer/sickle, stars, and an AK-47 as well as alternate letters — all with an eye toward making the typeface have the stiff, communist feel of the various sans serif types appearing on propaganda posters that were so prevalent during the Cold War..

Back In the USSR typeface font by Duncan Long

After getting the magazine rounded up, I decided to share the typeface. In doing so, I never expected anything like the popularity the font would enjoy; according to dafont.com’s count, the typeface had been downloaded 78,935 times to date from dafont — with many additional downloads from other sites,

And to my great surprise, one of those downloading the typeface would eventually use the font for a movie poster — Angelina Jolie’s In the Land of Blood and Honey.

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When not designing typefaces and fonts for movie poster designers and magazine editors, Duncan Long creates concept artwork for movies as well as book cover illustrations. See his movie concept artwork and illustrations at: Duncan Long’s Portfolio
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