Marlene Dietrich is awesome

August 28, 2007 6:29 AM

What font is this?
posted by milarepa to Media & Arts (8 answers total)

IdentiFont
What The Font
posted by IndigoRain at 6:49 AM on August 28, 2007

It looks hand-drawn. You could try tracing it using something like Illustrator.
posted by stereo at 6:50 AM on August 28, 2007

I agree that it looks hand-drawn - the two 'I's aren't quite the same. Like David Bowie.
posted by creeky at 6:53 AM on August 28, 2007 [3 favorites]

Old Hollywood credit lettering is a world unto itself. It's very unlikely this font exists in digital form and I've never even seen it in older font books. Identifont will not help you here. The Typophile font identification forum is your best bet, but you will probably get a similar response to mine.
posted by zadcat at 6:57 AM on August 28, 2007

Response by poster: Yes, I see that now. Can anyone recommend a font that approaches it? I had already tried What the Font and similar services before posting here.
posted by milarepa at 6:58 AM on August 28, 2007

My first instinct was to try What the Font, and it didn't really come up with a definitive answer. I agree that it was probably custom created.
posted by sjuhawk31 at 6:58 AM on August 28, 2007

Even if hand-lettered, it was based on some existing font-like style, but the letterer took subtle liberties like dropping the 'l' in Marlene below the baseline.

Making a note here to look into what kinds of lettering sample books they used in Hollywood.
posted by zadcat at 7:00 AM on August 28, 2007

Do the "Marlene" in Vendome bold, maybe slightly machine condensed. The DIETRICH maybe in Trump Medieval bold, ditto. You'll need to play around with them.

These are commercial fonts, mind you.
posted by zadcat at 7:07 AM on August 28, 2007