Typeface Design
Carnival of Souls is a 1962 indie horror film that follows the character of Mary Henry and her attempt at a new life after being the only survivor of a traumatic car accident. After moving to Utah and becoming a church organist, a fiendish ghoul known as, “The Man,” haunts Mary and has said ties to a nearby abandoned carnival on the outskirts of the Great Salt Lake. She finds herself drawn to this haunted setting as her visions become more persistent among her daily routines, and may possibly lead to revelations about her own harrowing past.
Inspiration:
I have always been fascinated with the artwork and typographic design of old carnival and circus posters. This interest inspired me to research visuals of 1950’s and 1960’s posters to better understand the type design I could use as an allusion to the film’s primary horror feature. After comparing many different styles, I finally settled on Onyx, a Monotype typeface from the Modern family, for its condensed design and thick versus thin contrasting lines.
Composition 1:
When beginning my preliminary work, I applied reductive techniques to the letterforms by overlaying a larger spiral on top of the text. I chose to do this pinstripe-approach because it is an image most people are familiar with when they think of this particular setting. I purposefully made the stripes stem from one point of origin in the letterform “O” of “OF” to create a psychological impression of shattering or hypnosis, a representation of Mary Henry’s experiences and state of mind throughout the movie.
Composition 2:
In my second composition, I decided to further manipulate the Onyx typeface I used in my first. I kept the spiral pinstripes from my preliminary work, but built off of it by overlapping lowercase typographic forms over the uppercase. I then inverted those lowercase forms in an attempt to convey a harlequin, “wonky,” and ghoulish impression to the viewer. I was pushed to revisit this composition many times after realizing that there oftentimes was too much going on and sacrificing the legibility.
Composition 3 (Final):
For my last composition, I played around with many combinations of different typefaces, but admired the ways in which Onyx interacted with Haettenschweiler, a realist sans-serif typeface. When I overlapped these letterforms, I enjoyed that the hairlines of the Onyx typeface had created an overall “splintery” effect. This also led to the suggestion that the hybrid could have been hand-drawn due to the contrast of the bolder and thicker features of Haettenschweiler. I further accentuated this after carefully repositioning fragments in ways that replicated the splintering of wood, similar to the texture found in abandoned carnival structures.
