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Matriarchavelli’s Treatise on World Domination poster

Contributed by Florian Hardwig on Jun 26th, 2022. Artwork published in .

2 Comments on “Matriarchavelli’s Treatise on World Domination poster”

  1. The Black Rose is very reminiscent of Dieter Steffmanns’ font called Blackletter (Macromedia Fontographer 4.1 Blackletter ExtraBold).

  2. 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.

    From top to bottom: Blackletter, Portcullion, Black Rose, and Portculliard.

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