Matriarchavelli’s Treatise on World Domination poster
Detail with a quote from Sophie Lewis’s Full Surrogacy Now. Feminism Against Family. Text set in Kingthings Exeter, with obliqued Kingthings Petrock.
The Society for Matriarchal World Domination was founded by Zoë Claire Miller and Mira Starke in 2019. From their archived website:
One blue back paper at a time, the Society for Matriarchal World Domination is flyposting for the end of the patriarchy. Artists and writers from diverse backgrounds collaborate in pairs to conceive posters that appear on billboards in the streets of Berlin every full moon. Following this monthly cycle, the posters address a radically indiscriminate audience in the theater of public space using text and images to speak to a plurality of feminist issues.
Shown here is the final edition of the poster series, with text by Selin Davasse and images by Molly Dyson. Conceived in 2019, it was posted in January 2020.
The typography brings together a diverse mix of typefaces, including Black Rose (“Matriarchavelli’s”) [correction: Portcullion, see comments] , Benton Modern Italic (“Treatise”), Kingthings Exeter (“on World”), and Edda (“Domination”).
In the wild: spotted by Posters of Berlin in March 2020
2 Comments on “Matriarchavelli’s Treatise on World Domination poster”
The Black Rose is very reminiscent of Dieter Steffmanns’ font called Blackletter (Macromedia Fontographer 4.1 Blackletter ExtraBold).
It is! The reason is that both fonts are based on the same source, Herman Ihlenburg’s Black Ornamented No. 532 from 1873.
In fact, the font in use isn’t FontMesa’s commercial Black Rose (2009), as I had assumed. Its r lacks the base, and the i dot is a little squeezed. It’s not Steffmann’s freebie Blackletter (2001) either. That one is better drawn than the one on the poster, see for example the i dot or the stems of h. Turns out it’s another freebie: Portcullion by Paul James Lloyd. I’ve adjusted the typeface credit. Portcullion was released in 2002 and revised as Portculliard in 2018.
Apart from FontMesa, none of the revivalists mention their sources. If Lloyd didn’t base his first version on Steffmann’s or another, earlier digitization, I’d assume it’s based on a showing of Black Ornamented in one of the alphabet books compiled by Dan X. Solo.
In terms of spacing and proportions, I like Steffmann’s version best.