Font used on Hard Day's Night?

July 4, 2006 6:07 PM

Can somebody identify the chunky font used on The Beatles' Hard Day's Night album cover? I need to recreate the artwork but can't find that font (or one very similar). The usual free font sites haven't come through for me.
posted by davebush to Media & Arts (6 answers total)

I found three Beatles fonts here, but none of them appeared on that album. Doesn't look too distinctive though... like some type of bold arial. DaFont.com has a pretty nice collection that you could sift through.
posted by ifranzen at 7:52 PM on July 4, 2006

You might try Identifont. You just answer a bunch of questions about your font, and it often, but not always, finds the name.
posted by foxinthesnow at 8:06 PM on July 4, 2006

I think it's probably hand drawn. That would not be uncommon for graphic arts of that era.
posted by raf at 8:55 PM on July 4, 2006

The closest I could come up with was Gothic Medium Condensed. It's a bit too condensed to be an exact match, though it does share most of the personality of the unknown font, especially the slightly concave uprights. One could certainly use it, flatten it a bit in an app like Illustrator, and end up with something very very close.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:57 AM on July 5, 2006

I definitely second hand-drawn. Hermes Black looks like a close enough match if you don't have someone with both samples infront of him doing a comparison.
posted by jammer at 7:43 AM on July 5, 2006

As with the poster, this is almost certainly hand-drawn. There was a time when lettering was a prized skill among illustrators.
posted by jjg at 9:09 AM on July 5, 2006