'It has little tiny quote marks that comes next to great big titling capitals very dramatic.' Charles Anderson, founder of Chank Fonts) was approached by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival about re-creating the typeface used in a silent film they were restoring and wanted to premiere at the event. The result is an exceptional homage that may pique interest in the forgotten title card genre-a font that speaks for a silent film. Recently, though, the Minneapolis-based type designer Chank Diesel (a.k.a. In fact, letterers rarely received credit in the original films. They were “Speedball”-style letters, named for the Speedball pen, a popular round-nibbed lettering tool that produced soft, round, fluid lines.Įasy to read on screen, these cards were mostly taken for granted. Hand drawn, black-and - white title and intertitle cards with scene-setting descriptions and character dialogue punctuated most movies.
In the early days of Hollywood, silent films were a boon for a generation of anonymous lettering artists.
