I have to defend this font. Consider this: The GALAX-E font was only made recently, right? This font has been around since before 2005 I believe. My guess is this font, with some editing for the dots, was what Pixar originally used. If it’s good enough for PIXAR, it’s good enough for me.
I’d say Pixar would have designers that make their own fonts. As would Disney and other movie studios.
If you want good fonts, you have to buy them. If you are doing professional work you just can’t get away with using free fonts. GALAX•E is worth every penny, and is a bargain.
Pixar would certainly have people that design typefaces, for movie titles and so forth. The Lucasfilm logo, for instance, uses a custom design that you can’t replicate with any given font. Whether Pixar turns around and has an entire character set built around those designs, probably depends on whether they need one or not.
I’d think that most TV shows/movies can easily get away with using pre-existing commercial fonts, though; and most certainly do. Given Gunship was around long before the movie while GALAX•E, as stated by its own creator, was inspired by the film, it’s quite likely the WALL•E title font was at least based on Gunship or something similar. I wonder if there was a commercial font that Gunship was trying to emulate… or is it just so old that it’s now free, lol?
In any case, I gladly paid the $20 for GALAX•E; and a few of the other fonts from that designer, as well. I’ve certainly paid more for fonts in the past that I’ve gotten less use out of, so it was a bargain for me. And as I said, a few of the characters in Gunship don’t appeal to me and would’ve made my BURN•E signature look weird, lol.
Susan Bradley is the designer of most of the Pixar titles for feature films and shorts. Her latest work has been on WALL•E, The Pixar Story and Ratatouille. She took a break from Pixar to do such film titles as An Inconvinient Truth, Dark Water and the TV show, NUMB3RS. Previously she did Monsters, Inc., For the Birds, Toy Story 2, A Bug’s Life and Toy Story among other Disney films.
Here is her site: susan-bradley.com/index.htm
Her resume: susan-bradley.com/film.htm
And some sample film titles she’s designed: susan-bradley.com/film_graphics2.htm
As well as print samples (including the Pixar logo): susan-bradley.com/print_samples.htm
For anyone that’s interested in other fonts used in the movie, I’m fairly certain that the BNL logo uses a slightly modified version of a Futura font… the closest match (that I can find, anyway) to the one used in the film being the Bitstream release of Futura Extra Black Italic. Adobe’s Extra Bold Oblique is probably second, but the R isn’t quite as good a match. No Futura that I’ve seen has an N quite as thick as the BNL logo, though, so I imagine that was altered slightly or the logo uses an iteration of Futura that I haven’t seen from a different foundry.
And the typeface used of the AXIOM lettering on the ship’s hull appears to be a font called Ethnocentric, the Truetype version of which is free and also available on DaFont.com. The Opentype version still costs money, apparently:
BTW, I got to talk to the guy who created Gunship, and confirmed that indeed, that was the official font for WALL-E. Like I said, good enough for pixar = good enough for me.
That’s so cool! Who knew we’d have some similarities?
BTW, I’ve also gone on the DaFont site to search for (dare I say it) the Pajama Sam font to see if they have it. It seems like they don’t, or I just haven’t searched hard enough. Maybe Humongous doesn’t release it’s own fonts?
Back on topic: I’ve also got the “Ethnocentric” font to write “Postulate” (the Axiom in my fanfic) or “Axiom”.
Yeah, Gunship wasn’t originally made for commercial use, so that’s why it’s available to the public. Pixar simply paid to use it/edit it slightly for commercial use.
I’m sure Disney has their own font designers too, but I mean, when somebody only asks for you to donate to a charity to use their font commercially and it’s already perfect, why not?