Trajan
Trajan
Carol Twombly, 1989
Serif · A film poster. Specifically a serious one, or a legal drama.
Based on the inscription at the base of Trajan's Column in Rome, carved around AD 113, which means the letterforms are nineteen centuries old and the typeface is from 1989. It has capitals only, because the Roman inscription had no lowercase — lowercase letters had not been invented. Its dominance of film posters through the 1990s and 2000s was so total that it became a running joke among designers.
The facts
- Designed by
- Carol Twombly
- Released
- 1989
- Classification
- Serif
- What it signals now
- A film poster. Specifically a serious one, or a legal drama.
Where you have seen it
- Titanic
- The Lord of the Rings
- Hundreds of other film posters
Other typefaces from the 1980s
| Typeface | Year | Designer | What it signals |
|---|---|---|---|
| Arial | 1982 | Robin Nicholas and Patricia Saunders | A default. Something nobody chose. |
| Papyrus | 1982 | Chris Costello | A smoothie bar, a yoga studio, or Avatar. |
| Chicago | 1984 | Susan Kare | The original Macintosh, and the first iPod. |
This page describes the typeface rather than showing it. Displaying a specimen requires a licensed font file and almost none of these may be redistributed, so the descriptions name the letters to look at instead.
Common questions
- Who designed Trajan?
- Carol Twombly, in 1989.
- What is Trajan used for?
- A film poster. Specifically a serious one, or a legal drama. You will have seen it on Titanic, The Lord of the Rings, Hundreds of other film posters.
Related pages
- Typefaces from the 1980s 4 here
- Garamond Claude Garamond, 1530
- Caslon William Caslon, 1722
- Baskerville John Baskerville, 1757
- Didot Firmin Didot, 1784
- Bodoni Giambattista Bodoni, 1798
- Times New Roman Stanley Morison and Victor Lardent, 1932
- Georgia Matthew Carter, 1996
Sources
- Official vendor product documentation — At One Place