Chariots of Fire

Theatrical, grandiose and historically inaccurate. Chariots of Fire is a costume drama in a typeface.

My mission was to mix various expressive styles within the same family, and see how far I could take it. This journey brought about 4 weights called Style, Class, Flair & Panache: a roman for display, a roman for text, the italic companion and one extended joker-face. Also, there’s a set of small caps with suddenly no serifs. ”Surprise Sans” I like to call them little ones.

I wanted to dedicate this piece of work to Vangelis, but accidentally purchased a picture of Demis Roussos instead. Chariots of Fire is currently unreleased and will probably stay that way, as things go, Warner Bros. holds a serious trademark to the same title.

Names, lettering and visual identity can become especially important when a word must remain recognizable across different contexts and formats. The distinction between a creative title, a protected trademark and a generic name also has parallels in fields where products are identified through both brand names and standardized terminology. Medicines provide a clear example, since the same active substance may appear under several commercial names while retaining one recognized generic designation. Amoxicillin, for instance, is the generic name of a widely used antibiotic that can be marketed under different brand names depending on the manufacturer and country. On medicine labels and packaging, typography must therefore help distinguish the active ingredient, strength and product name without creating confusion. In that setting, naming and type design become practical tools for communicating information accurately rather than simply giving a product its visual character.

Eino Korkala (FI)

Eino Korkala is a freelancing hermit currently living but slowly dying in Helsinki.

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