Black Flag Font

February 1, 2004 5:37 AM

I'm trying to track down a copy of the font used on the Black Flag album covers. I've seen this question asked on a few forums, but no answers.

Freeware would be ideal, but I'd consider buying a copy.
posted by backOfYourMind to media & arts (11 comments total)

That would be Optima.
posted by taz at 9:55 AM on February 1, 2004

Black Flag used various TT fonts to spell out their name and album titles. The only variance were the four Chuck Dukowski logo bars found on every Black Flag album.
posted by oh posey at 10:20 AM on February 1, 2004

yup
posted by amberglow at 10:20 AM on February 1, 2004

I meant to post this on the other "Name That Font" question, but I couldn't be bothered to find the link at the time.

WhatTheFont
summary: scan a font, upload it, and it'll try to ID it. i've heard it works pretty well.
posted by keswick at 10:26 AM on February 1, 2004

Check out Identifont. It's an expert system that asks you questions about how the letters look. It works best if you have all the letters, but you can always choose "don't know" if you don't have the letter in question.
posted by electro at 12:34 PM on February 1, 2004

What the font works quite well, actually. I've used it many times.
posted by signal at 2:51 PM on February 1, 2004

oh posey - You're quite right, but Optima is the name of the font I was after, and I had it all along!

Thanks all.
posted by backOfYourMind at 6:18 PM on February 1, 2004

what's up with the bars anyway? anybody know the meaning behind the logo?

(actually, somewhat on subject: what, if any, is the relationship between this husker du logo (crappy image, sorry) and this psychic tv logo? (something i've always wondered about, pardon me if i've crossed some AskMe etiquette line.)
posted by danOstuporStar at 9:33 AM on February 2, 2004

what's up with the bars anyway? anybody know the meaning behind the logo?

I think its supposed to be a stylized black flag
posted by InfidelZombie at 10:11 AM on February 2, 2004

font resource (although not exactly helpful for this particular question):

Acid Fonts
posted by Witty at 3:15 PM on February 2, 2004

Just as an update, I was wrong about the font being Optima - but thanks Amberglow, it was very close.
I scanned an album cover and let WhatTheFont have a crack at it. Although it was a bit tricky because the 'LA' in Black and Flag are both joined together, WTF was able to suss out that I wanted ITC Friz Quadrata Bold.

Good call, keswick.
posted by backOfYourMind at 4:30 AM on February 9, 2004